At my son’s pre-school, the children recently participated in the “Great Kindness Challenge.” As part of the challenge, the center had a book drive to collect books for needy children in our area. The school also created a beautiful Giving Tree to which teachers added apples with acts of kindness written on them. I can’t begin to tell you how happy I was walking into the center to pick him up each day and witnessing these acts of kindness. We are bombarded by such bad news on a daily basis; people being so cruel to one another. The fact that our children are being taught what it means to be kind is so important.
I’m as guilty as I’m sure some other parents are of occasionally doing something maybe not so kind in front of our kids. Just the other day I was driving and yelled out loud as someone cut me off. “They just made a mistake, mom,” my little guy says in the backseat. “If you made a mistake, you wouldn’t want someone to yell at you.” He’s right.
I’ll never forget the call I received a couple of years ago from my son’s school letting parents know they were evacuating the building and sending children home. (Cue the hysterics!) I later found out that an email had been sent to one of the buildings of the school with a bomb threat. Luckily, nothing was found and everyone was safe.
When my son got home from school the next day, I asked him how his day was and if his teacher spoke about the early dismissal. He said to me, “Mommy, I know everything… There was a bomb thread!” That’s right, thread with a “d!” He also mentioned that the teacher told the children that she was there to keep all students safe. My innocent little boy was suddenly trying to comprehend what he needed to be protected from.
As parents and educators, it is our job to make sure our children are safe and protect them from, as my son would say, “the bad man.” Unfortunately, there are all sorts of bad men and women out there and as our children get older it will become harder and harder to protect them.
You’re probably asking yourself why this is a focus in a financial blog. Well, there are also plenty of bad men and women when it comes to money and it is never too soon to learn to be protective of what’s ours. It may not be the same as someone sending an alarming email to a school, you can’t deny the fact that evil is evil, no matter how you look at it.
I’m sure you remember Bernie Madoff. You don’t have to be knowledgeable in finance to understand what he did. He destroyed thousands of lives with his Ponzi scheme. The dollar amount is staggering; roughly $50 billion of his investors’ money was lost. Madoff is paying the price today, serving 150 years in prison, the maximum allowed.
Although quite a serious topic, a few years ago, Jimmy Kimmel Live used Sesame Street to explain the Bernie Madoff case. It’s up to you if you want to share with your kids, however, the point is clearly made using something as simple as cookies! Take a look!
Just recently a story in The Wall Street Journal was titled Would-Be Financial Whiz Is Charged With Stealing From Investors. It is a bizarre story of fraud with $700,000 stolen from investors.
The list of financial fraud goes on and on. Just tune into CNBC’s American Greed and you’ll be blown away with what some people try to get away with and how they will do anything for money. I recently logged onto CNBC.com and found a rundown of some upcoming episodes. Here are just a couple.
Sixteen-year old Barry Minkow starts ZZZZ Best Carpet Cleaners and quickly realizes there’s more cash in fraud.
Claudio Osorio casts himself as a wealthy international business tycoon to scam big money from big names.
We hear all too often of crooks preying on the elderly with scams over the phone. But, I’ve also heard stories of well-educated, young people caught in the middle of a financial headache due to a scam. It’s out there! We might not always be able to protect our kids, but we can certainly get them on the right track. We need to teach them to be responsible, giving, kind and very much aware of the “bad man.”
Want to take this lesson further? Give us your email and receive a free download to a story that you can read with your child called “A Tough Lesson For Bode & Leo On The Playground,” educate yourself even more on how to explain financial greed to kids and share a fun activity called “Depositing Good Deeds.”
