TheMommyBlog

Charles Sykes is the author of Dumbing Down Our Kids. He provided for high School and college graduates a list of eleven things they did not learn in school. In his book, he talks about how their feel good, politically-correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality, and set them up for failure in the real world. Lay this one on your young ones.

Rule 1. Life is not fair; get used to it.

Rule 2. The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3. You will NOT make $ 40 000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4. If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping:—they called it opportunity.

Rule 6. If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes. Learn from them.

Rule 7. Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes, and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So, before you save the rainforest from the parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8. Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades; they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9. Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off, and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10. Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11. Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Nothing in life is free.

Decide what you want in life, and then start the hard work of making it happen.

What’s the best way to discuss the current economy with kids? Today on Momversation, Nataly Kogan of Work It, Mom! wants to know if you’ve talked to your children about money and the economic crisis. How do explain family “budget cuts” to your little ones? What are your tips for other families? Join the conversation by leaving a comment below or participating in our related forums:

• Ways to save money
• Teaching kids good money habits

And speaking of the forums, we’re excited to announce some cool new features that will help you stay connected to your favorite Momversation topics including recent activity, recent episodes, and recent forum posts. Check out this forum thread for more information.

Panelists: Asha Dornfest of Parent Hacks, Heather Armstrong of dooce, Mindy Roberts of The Mommy Blog, Nataly Kogan of Work It, Mom!

I’ve always wanted to say that to my ex. Biiiig birthday yesterday. In keeping with our current insolvency, we decided to have homemade gifts and to bake a cake. Easy AND prudent, no?

So then I went to a craft store to get fondant, a fondant roller, alphabet cutouts, and child cutouts. Once all that was done I picked up the kids, took them shopping for the ingredients, and started to mix the sugar and eggs when I realized we had forgotten a dealbreaker ingredient. Back in the car, back to the store, back home for three minutes and… phone call from child still at Dad’s (home sick, fell asleep, didn’t come to the store with us). “I want to heeellllllp! Come get me!” Back in the car, back to Dad’s (two blocks from the store), everyone ran in to get something or other and then spent fifteen minutes saying goodbye to Dad when we’d see him at dinner in two hours WITHOUT A CAKE if we didn’t get going. Back home, freakage ensued because we’d already cracked the eggs, then everyone wanted to stir and sift and measure and oh, man, didja see how that flour just flies everywhere?

How do you balance work and motherhood? Today, Heather Armstrong of dooce asks the Momversation panelists how they deal with working while raising children. Do you feel guilty about the time spent at work or away from your kids? What’s your advice to Heather and other working moms?

Join the conversation by leaving a comment below or participating in our related forums:

• How do I adjust to returning to work after maternity leave?
• Work-At-Home Moms: Sharing tips and tricks

Panelists: Alice Bradley of Finslippy, Heather Armstrong of dooce, Mindy Roberts of The Mommy Blog, and Rebecca Woolf of Girl’s Gone Child.

And boy, are my arms tired!

What are you people telling your kids about the financial crisis? Any of it sticking? I was having the hardest time explaining why the simple solutions my kid was coming up with—while insightful—wouldn’t do jack.

“But why can’t we just fix it? Why can’t you just go out and get a job?” Wait—that was last month’s question. And the previous month’s.

“But why can’t we just fix it? Why can’t the government just make more money if everyone needs it?”

“Well, sweetie, if you flood the market—with money, or gas, or marbles—suddenly the value of that item goes down. Then you’ve created an inflation problem. Usually we see inflation in the form of gas prices, which were artificially jacked up, but it can also happen with a sudden and significant influx of cash.” I actually said “influx of cash” without laughing my head off.

“But why can’t they just fix it?”

“Because it’s the economy, not a wand. If it were that easy, people way smarter than us would have already solved it and we wouldn’t even be talking about the price of marbles.” Ever.

“But I don’t get why they can’t help.”

“You mean like they helped the failing banks? Like that? Well, sweetheart, people way greedier than us put one over on the rest of the world. And the government is helping. A LOT. But that doesn’t just come out of thin air, it comes out of our taxes.”

“WHAT?”

“What did you think we paid taxes for? It costs money to run a government and to serve five hundred dollar bottles of wine at a dinner party for world leaders meeting to discuss the crisis. Taxes and the redistribution of them are helping us get by right now. Without taxes, there’s no unemployment benefits and no free school lunch program.

“Let me put it this way: let’s say you had five apples, and the lunch lady wasn’t there to set everything up. You could probably sell those apples for twenty bucks apiece because everyone would want one.” And they’d pay it too, with all the pocket money or gold bars kids in this neighborhood seem to have access to. Better yet, do you take American Express? “But if you had a thousand apples, you might get twenty apiece for the first couple sales, but then people would notice that big stack of apples behind you and wait until the price came down. And you’d lower it in a hurry to sell all those apples before they went bad. In fact, at some point you’ll be thinking about paying kids to take them away because you don’t want a great, stinking, rotting pile of apples left over. That’s because people would buy what they need and then walk away. Once they don’t need your apples, you’ll be dropping that price like a To-Do List just to make a few more sales.”

At this point, his eyes were kind of drifting over my shoulder to the opposite wall where he could see the reflection of Flapjack in a framed print behind us. So I continued, “And that’s when my leg fell off and I had to staple it back on.”

“What?”

“Hellooo. You just stopped listening. I was talking about supply and demand and apples.”

“Oh. Why would I sell apples?”