Mom, What's a Sequester?

It's hard not to get a sense of panic right now about the impending across the board budget cuts set to hit Friday if the Congress doesn't do what it's supposed to do, i.e., govern (make choices, make decisions, compromise extremist politics for the good of the whole).  Of course these days it can be hard to distinguish the actual reality of the crisis from within the multi-media hullaballoo that surrounds us, and it can be challenging to distinguish this fiscal crisis from the fiscal cliff we were just perched upon and the one set to hit later in the year (which is really the one from before, which we solved by pushing until later). How worried should we be?  Very worried, we are told.  Weren't we supposed to be worried that time before, but everything turned out okay?  Yes, but this time is different, and by the way we weren't really okay.  Oh, okay.

So now explain all of this to a 7 year-old.  Or should you try? There seems to be general agreement out there in parenting-advice-land that it is never to early to begin to explaining budgeting and saving and sound home economics to children, though there is some disagreement on how to do it.  I'm a bit daunted by the prospect of this, as I'm somewhat haphazard in my own budgeting, but I get why.  When does it make sense to explain national and international budget issues and economics (particular when the way we manage our national budget seems to run contrary to everything we're supposed to be telling our kids to do with their own money, for the most part).  Why not start early?  But the question is, how?

Since I'm not an economic policy whiz, I did what any parent would do: I googled it.  I found nothing particularly helpful about how to explain sequestration and it's impact to children, although I did find a lot on the impact of sequestration on children (bad, very bad).  Seems to me that if something is going to have a negative impact on a lot of children, we should be able to explain to them what it is and why it's going to happen.  It's only fair, and wise, especially if we want to raise children to take responsibility for themselves and others, and to be good fiscal stewards of their homes, communities, and the broader world community.

I did find some interesting resources on explaining economics to children, which I thought I'd share.  The quick fix explanations of economic issues (for instance here, on the fiscal cliff) I find somewhat unsatisfactory, I think because they remind me of most parenting books, which speak with absolute assurance about the absolute right way to do things, and make you feel rather sheepish about having to ask.  I prefer some of the broader resources, which offer a range of options, including books you might read to your kid otherwise and tips on how to use them to explain useful concepts.  Oddly (at least to me), the Federal Reserve has a page with links to lesson plans on how to use children's literature to explain economic concepts.  So, the lesson on one of my favorite books begins:

Little House in the Big Woods describes how the Ingalls family produced the goods they needed to survive while living in a log cabin far from their nearest neighbors. In this lesson, students will define the production function as the combination of inputs that results in outputs and will identify the inputs as human resources, capital resources, natural resources, and intermediate goods. 

Okay, maybe we won't start there, because I just might start to cry.

I like the Rutgers "EconKids" site, which also suggests ways for parents and teachers to use children's books to teach economic concepts to children, but provides a real diversity of topics and maybe less of a hard sell on the homo economicus stuff.  I particularly like the section on Text-to-World connections, which suggests books that will help kids relate ideas to economic, business, and financial situations they observe in the world around them.  There are some appealing books with stories about microfinance and the Grameen Bank (really!) and books about the Depression that explain unemployment and job loss.  If you are super motivated, you can read a research paper by Rutgers on teaching economics to children using stories.  All of this seems to be an extension of the dubious but time honored tradition of using children's literature to communicate moral stories, although it is oddly and sadly fitting that many of 'moral tales' can now be seen as being about money.

So, how are you explaining the mess we're in and how we got there to your children?

Coming Out of Hibernation

Haven't posted here recently...excuses are many, and uninteresting.  It is definitely much harder to think about volunteering and social action with kids during a Northeast winter, when it seems too damn cold to be creatively engaged with the world.  The bears may have it right.  I think I also hit a stretch of being a little weary of this project - not so much of finding ways to engage my own family in acts of community but of hoisting the banner for it, and trying to rally people behind me in my meager way.  People don't rally easily, I understand that, and I understand why (for all of the reasons that led me to start this blog in the first place), but still, it's hard not be disappointed, and think about giving the whole thing the toss.  But I'm not going to (inspirational music swells), at least not yet.  At some point, I will stumble into how to do this well, and that's worth plodding on for.

Here, by the way, are a few things I've learned so far.  I know that the kinds of activities that I'm looking for right now include those that:

• Engage kids and adults together: Younger kids learn through modeling and they feel valued (based on my anecdotal conversations) when they're engaged in something that adults also feel is important.  I felt less good about an activity we did recently that had the kids doing a craft project, ostensibly for a good purpose, that was not designed to engage adults at the same time.  It was nice, it was worthy, I don't think it registered as valuable to any of the kids who were there, any more than the bunny ears project they might have done at an Easter egg hunt.  I kicked myself for not realizing this in advance.  We have really enjoyed the things we've done together, whether that is digging at Added Value farm, chopping carrots at a soup kitchen, marching across the Brooklyn Bridge, or spreading compost at a community garden.  This doesn't mean I don't think integrating social justice and social responsibility into school curricula isn't incredibly important, just that the way we integrate these activities into the daily lives of families seems to make more sense when the activity isn't just "for kids." It's a 'show don't tell' moment in the work of families.  I also love the idea of kids developing their own activities for their peers (see below) but that's quite different from activities that may do little more than pay lip service to the real role kids want to play in our communities, even at a young age.

• Bring kids physically into communal space: We've done a couple things via internet, and I've posted a bunch of opportunities here that involve things you can do at home - 'shopping' for those affected by Hurricane Sandy at Amazon, 'buying' cows etc. from Heifer International.  These are great home-based activities, and I do think folks can actively engage kids in these projects in a way that's meaningful for them.  Still, I think opportunities to get out of the house and interact with others while engaging in acts of community (volunteerism, social action, protest, political engagement, holding the door for the next guy, etc) are invaluable.  I'm not a social media luddite and appreciate the immense power and value of virtual communities and new ways of organizing.  But I want my kid to see people, actual people, coming together to accomplish tasks of value to all of us.  The two-dimensional iteration can come later, once she knows what it stands in for.  Call me old-fashioned, I can take it.

• Let kids set the agenda:  So, somewhat in contrast to the first point up there, I'm really interested in projects that let kids build on their ideas of how to change the world and engage the adults in a supporting role.  This is a bit more challenging with younger kids and maybe more geared to the 9 and over set, but, looking forward, I'd like to understand how to do this well, and how to catalyze these kinds of activities.  I haven't been that great at it with my own daughter as yet, who is seven, and she's been a good sport about letting me pick out what we do and gamely going along for the ride.  But I'm going to try.  Watch this space, and send me your ideas.

What have you learned recently about engaging your kids in acts of community?  I'd love to hear about it.  Later this week will post some new volunteering opportunities.  Send me ideas or links if you've got 'em.