Remember that section of Craigslist? Where you can… I don’t know, supposedly find someone who you felt connection to but never actually exchanged numbers with? I remember one night I idly scrolled through the posts, fascinated by the display of humanity.
It reminded me of my coming of age years before cell phones when things like that really happened. You could meet a friend or a crush, and then never have a way to find them again.
I was reminded of it again because of my oldest. Last year, his Spanish teacher was a dear Jamaican granny of a woman whose room was full of empowering posters. She clearly had a passion for teaching and the best interests of her students at heart. Then she abruptly left that November.
I am so excited to share this book today, because it represents a wonderful first. It was recommended to me by my 11-year-old, Two. She read it, told me about it, then she left it on my book pile and told me I should read it, because it was that good.
She tells me about books all the time, and she is a voracious reader, but this is the first time she was so direct with a recommendation. And true to her word, it was a great book.
Halloween and I have a difficult past. I lived next door to a church growing up. We were regularly subjected to smashed pumpkins, raw eggs, and sometimes toilet paper.
The year I was seven was the last year I was allowed to Trick or Treat. After that, we didn’t “celebrate” Halloween anymore. We would close all our blinds and hunker down that night. We watched old musicals and ate candy. It became a tradition, and two other families joined us. We’d rotate houses, eventually ending up at the house of the family who lived furthest out in the country, and therefore got the fewest Trick-or-Treaters.
I grew up and had kids. I didn’t think much about Halloween, and my kids were too little to care.
Except One was in Pre-K at a Catholic school. And they did all kinds of seasonal activities. At the time, I was kind of shocked. Why were Christians celebrating Halloween? By then, I thought we didn’t. Among Evangelicals, it had kind of become a thing.
My kid learned what vampires were from that school, and I was pissed. I remember having an uncomfortable conversation with his teacher about it.
We started our own tradition of take-out pizza by candlelight on Halloween. I would watch the Trick-or-Treaters go by. There were lights on up and down the block. It was the only night most of our neighbors came out and talked to each other. I found myself wondering why we were staying out of it.
It has always been important to me for my kids to grow up to be financially literate. Especially with today’s world, where experts are predicting kids are going to struggle just to have the same standard of living their parents have, let alone surpass it.
My goals are that my kids know how to budget and plan, and that they know how to give. To that end, we have regular conversations about our money and theirs. We are real with them about budgeting, and they see me entering my receipts into Every Dollar, a DR (Dave Ramsey) app that helps you budget and track spending. For our homeschool, we read How to Turn $100 into $1,000,000: Earn! Save! Invest!, by
Teaching my kids about philanthropy has been a little more challenging. Our kids know that we support a couple of kids through different organizations. They write letters to our sponsored kid in South America. But since most of our giving happens online, in the form of automatic monthly withdrawals, they aren’t really seeing it happening. And I don’t always think to talk to them about it.
Last Christmas, a family friend had a great idea for a gift for our kids that was both creative, and helped solve the problem of how to teach your kids about giving.
