Dear Parents of other kids,
Featured author: Matthieu Maisonneuve, aged 12
Being a parent must not be easy because there are always lots of decisions you have to make. Do you make the right ones for your kids? Let me tell you what your kids think!
Kids Using Technology
Everybody is talking about how technology can be good and it can be bad. Technology can be very useful at times especially when you want to learn something or when you need to learn something, but it’s important not to spend too much time on your electronics. If you do your eyes will begin to get vefry irritated, you won’t get enough exercise and, as my dad would say, your brain will become mushy.
When I have the opportunity to use my devices, I generally use them to play games, to watch youtube, to learn stuff or just for fun. Sometimes, I will draw pictures, talk with my friends, write stories or just go crawl into my little netflix hole. I enjoy electronics because they are useful and at the same time they are fun and relaxing. But, don’t spend too much time or you may find yourself bored. Trust me. I speak from experience. I try to regulate my own time on my devices so my parents don’t have to.
My opinion is that as parents, you should consider setting an amount of time per day that your child can use their electronics. Kids will probably not like this, but it’s good for them. So, you should still do this. (Don’t get any ideas, Mom!) Some common limits are half an hour a day, one hour a day or two hours a day. From what I hear from my friends, one hour a day is generally the most common amount of time that kids are allowed to use their electronics. If your child’s device happens to be an xbox, you can set a parental timer for an amount of time per day after which the xbox will shut off for the day. I don’t know how, but you can. You could easily find out how on youtube. And, you can find out if other devices have this option, too.
Kids Learning about Money
And, then there’s money. Money is very important in everyone’s lives a you probably know. If you don’t have enough money, you won’t have a house. You won’t have a fridge, or a microwave, or an oven, or a table, or a bedroom…. I could go on for ages. Having a house is very important. Without a house you would be living on the streets. And do you really want that? Because of this, it is very important that you use your money wisely. If you don’t, you could find yourself one day with what is seemingly a lot of money to spare, and waking up the next day with none. If you don’t want this happening to your child, I would suggest teaching them the value of certain things, as many parents do.
For example, if they want to get a toy. Let’s say there’s this really cool toy, but it has quite the big price tag on it. If that is the case, you can try to help them find a very similar toy, just as good but less money, or just a toy that costs less. If you go this option, it will give your child the same fun but for less money which is just as good. Me and my dad have done this quite a few times. Personally, I think this price shopping is a good strategy.
Let’s talk about stuff. Coming from someone who is spoiled because he’s an only child, I would say kids don’t need a lot of stuff. Maybe four or five presents for Christmas would be great. If you have more kids, then you might want to rethink that. Of course you want your kids to have everything, but they really don’t need everything. (Did you hear that, Mom?… No? OK. Good!)
Another way parents teach their kids the value of money is to give them an allowance. I would have an opinion on an allowance if I had one. The fact that I don’t have one is fine, but if I did I would spend my allownace on the opinion. I would probalby save my money up and buy something more expensive than spending it every week. For example, if I wanted a certain board game or video game, I would use my allowance to buy it. As it is, I have to spend my birthday money on these things. Thank God for Grandparents!
Having Family Traditions
Traditions are a good way to keep family practices alive. Every family should have their traditions. They don’t have to be complicated and take a lot of preparation or money. The important thing is that the family spends time together doing things that they like. I like traditions because most of them are fun things to do and they give you things to do together.
For example, every Fall my family goes to an apple orchard to collect apples. Sometimes, if the orchard has one, we’ll go through the corn maze and solve it. We ride on a tractor to where the apple trees are. After we have collected our apples, we go to the shop and have some of their apple cider and donuts. We do this so that we have some fun, spend some time together and we have an activity to do outdoors.
Here are some other examples of our traditions: We go to Croatia every few years to visit family and play tourists; after Christmas eve mass, we host a little Christmas party and before we go to bed, we get to open the smallest present under the tree; in the Spring, we go to see the Ferrari parade which is fun because we get to see a lot of Ferraris and other Italian cars, and I am a car person so this is very fun for me – and I don’t mind that we have a little gelato while we’re in little Italy; then, once a year close to the time of my birthday, the Richmond fair comes around. We like going to this because there are many fun rides and there’s a Ferris Wheel which I find pretty cool. There’s the demolition derby as well. As I mentioned, I like cars and I like watching the cars destroy themselves at the fair. What are some traditions you enjoy with your family?
Having traditions means sharing experiences together, learning about ourselves and each other and making memories to share later. You should have some.
Home Schooling your Kids
Once upon a time, my mom and I went homeshcooling. For those of you who do not know what home schooling is, it says it in the name: School. At home. It was a very fun experience and I would suggest it to anyone and everyone.
First off, it’s a lot more fun than school even though you may not have as many friends as at school. You may get to go on voyages meet people and make new friends or you can make friends with the people on your street or in your neighbourhood. In Croatia, my mom and I even went to a school where we did presentations about life in Canada and made some new friends. We also got to spend time with family members that we don’t usually get to see much. In Greece, we met some friends’ relatives who welcomed us into their home and showed us around, too.
Secondly, I foud that in terms of learning French verbs and mathematics, I learned much more and much faster with my mom as my teacher. I find this, because my mom had only one student and was able to concentrate on that student’s needs instead of being in a class where there are a lot of students. Also, if we needed to spend more time on one subject than another, we could because we had lots of flexibility unlike normal school where schedules can be strict and restrained. For that reason, I found the process was much quicker and easier for the both of us.
Because my mom only had one student, we got to do stuff that I may not have been able to do at school: choose my own projects like building, marketing, advertising and selling my own figet spinners; include math in things we were doing every day; and choose when to have free time and what to do with that time.
And, to top it off, when you’re homeschooling, your school is where you are at the moment. You could be in your house in your living room, you could be in a warzone (a drastic example to show you can really be anywhere), you could be in the EIffel Tower’s cafeteria (we did this – it was so cool! We read about the construction of the Eiffel Tower and did math about the construction and visitor information.) Heck! You could even be on the ISS (International Space Station. – I wish!) You can have as many adventures as you like and still learn.
A Few More Random Things You Should Know
Don’t talk about private stuff in front of friends. It’s embarrassing! Private stuff might be situations in the family or situations with other friends. It could also be stuff in general that you don’t want your friends to know. For example, if your kid has a stuffie, that’s private stuff. (Get it?) Different kids might have different things that they like to keep private. Some kids might want to keep everything that goes on at home private, others may not have much private stuff. Feel free to talk to your kids about what they don’t want you to discuss in front of their friends.
You don’t need to explain stuff you’ve already explained. Explaining how to do something even though it’s been explained many times before is annoying. When my parents do this, I’m thinking: “I know – you already told me this – you don’t need to tell me this.” Instead, if you think I’m not doing it right, you could bring it up another time when I’m not in the middle of doing that or anything else. Mom.
When I say I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it.
Except when I did it.
Sometimes kids lie. It’s the truth.
(Sometimes adults lie too, but that’s a whole other topic!)
We don’t lie to make you mad. We lie because we’re afraid we did the wrong thing and we’ll get in trouble. We want you to know that we’re learning and we don’t always want you to know when we made a mistake.
Kids like for parents to do cool stuff. Something I think is cool is that my Mom is writing a book! Sometimes it means a little bit of time taken away from other things and then I’m not very happy. But that only happens a little bit. And the cool factor makes up for it. Looking back, if I could tell mom to write her book or not, I would tell her to do it. So, if you have something cool you want to do, if you have a passion to follow, I definitely think you should do it.
– Matthieu Maisonneuve, aged 12