Banking on parenting

According to Jim Gallagher’s column in yesterday’s Post-Dispatch, you can tell a lot about people by what they leave in their repossessed cars: the unopened bank mail, fast food wrappers, ATM receipts documenting multiple withdrawals in a single day. All the things indicative of a disorganized life.

What’s saddest, however, is that not only are these folks have difficulty managing their own finances, but they’re also modeling a stressful, disorganized lifestyle to their children. All too often children’s school books are buried in the remains of these repossessed vehicles, indicating to folks in the banks’ loan departments that these parents weren’t paying attention to their children’s homework.

Fast forward a few years, and the banks are finding themselves repossessing cars from these now-grown children whose parents they had dealt with earlier. Apparently the parents hadn’t taught them good financial habits and no one else was doing it either.

Parents cannot begin to understand the impact they have on their children, say early childhood experts. Developing brains soak up every word, every attitude, every action. So if parents don’t have the skills themselves to create a safe and stable environment for their children, guess what gets passed on to the next generation?

It’s critical for young parents to understand money matters. Personal finance is much more involved than balancing a checkbook. It’s credit and debit cards,  consumer loans, savings and investments, budgeting and setting financial goals. Who teaches that today?

A lot of Parents as Teachers parents get this kind of guidance from their parent educators. Money Matters: a young parent’s workbook for finances and the future is one resource teens and other young parents can find in the e-Store at www.parentsasteachers.org. (Look for item #257.)

Of pizza and Parents as Teachers

A while back I blogged about a “wonderful Parents as Teachers weekend” where I learned over pizza with my mother-in-law, Deb, about the successful establishment of the first Parents as Teachers  program in Wilson County, Tenn.  

Our casual conversation over 4 years ago about the work we both do with children and teen parents (I at the National Center here in St. Louis and she at YouthLinks in Wilson County, Tenn.) flowered into a fabulous collaboration between four different agencies that found a way to mesh together their multiple programs and philosophies to serve the families in their community. The agencies involved are the Lebanon Special School District, Wilson County Schools, Prospect, Inc., and the University of Tennessee Extension, Wilson County. 

On a recent visit to Nashville in March, Deb proudly handed me a DVD that the program developed for recruitment … I couldn’t help but share!

More recently, upon editing our registration mailer this week for the Parents as Teachers Conference (slated for November) I was pleased to see that Shelly Barnes from the University of Tennessee Extension will be presenting about their unique Parents as Teachers collaboration.  I’ll definitely be in attendance, so Shelly …  see you there!

Of tweets, texts, blogs and posts

Julie and I spent the day with a roomful of communications professionals all eager to learn how to leverage online communication to build better relationships for our organizations. We all know e-communications are integral to our organizations’ strategic business planning, but it can be frustrating, time consuming and challenging to keep up with it all.

What’s the biggest problem e-communicators face today? Desensitizing our audiences by sending them 1) too many messages, 2) messages that aren’t relevant (did you know it takes just 2 to 5 non-relevant messages from you before recipients begin to ignore you?), or 3) messages that are simply without heart or personality.

That means organizations have to learn to write differently. (Did you know the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism is offering its first new major in 50 years called “convergence journalism” to train upcoming journalists in the specialty of writing for today’s e-media?)

We have to get feedback from our audiences about what kind of information they want and how they want it provided. What’s your preference? How do you like to get information from the National Center for Parents as Teachers? RSS feed, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blog, Web site, e-mail, text messages?

Say cheese!

Smile and the world smiles with you…and those of us with the brightest smiles as little children apparently have an extra advantage: lower divorce rates.

According to scientists from DePauw University in Indiana, smiling is good for more than the soul. Children’s smiles actually helped predict which ones would experience a broken marriage later in life.

Matt Hertenstein, lead author of the study, says that what happens to us early in our lives has a great impact on our future happiness. (Hasn’t Parents as Teachers been saying this for 25 years?) He postulates that perhaps happy people attract happy people which leads to a greater likelihood of a succesful marriage. No one really knows for sure, but hey—it’s easy to smile!

What is Idaho’s governor thinking?!

With overwhelming bi-partisan support, the Idaho legislature just passed the Parents as Teachers Support Act (House Bill 245) which would provide statutory authority to establish a foundation for Parents as Teachers in Idaho through the Children’s Trust. Unfortunately Governor Otter just vetoed this bill earlier today. 

The legislature can vote to override Governor Otter’s decision with a simple vote by the House and Senate.  Both chambers have already voted in favor of this bill (Senate: 28 – yes; 6 – no; 1 absent and House: 59 - yes; 10 – no; 1 absent).

• Parents as Teachers services were drastically reduced in Idaho due to action taken by Governor Otter shortly after his election into office.
• Parents as Teachers produces real results for Idaho children and families by improving school readiness and continued academic success, increasing parental involvement, reducing child abuse and neglect, promoting better health and identifying health and developmental issues at an early age.
• This bill is budget neutral - it just establishes a foundation for future Parents as Teachers operations.  Both Chambers have already voted in support of this bill.

Please contact your legislators, Representative Lawrence Denney, Speaker of the House, and Senator Robert Geddes, President Pro Tempore of the Senate.

• Ask them to schedule a vote in the House and Senate to override the Governor’s veto.
• Ask themto vote in favor of the bill when the override vote is scheduled. Because the legislature is nearly done with their session, it is critical that you reach out by close of business on Tuesday April 21.

  If you aren’t sure which representative and senator represent you, visit: http://legislature.idaho.gov/who’smylegislator.htm. Or call your Idaho legislator at 208-332-1000 or through the Internet at http://legislature.idaho.gov/howtocontactlegislators.htm.

In addition to contacting your local representative and senator, contact Speaker Denney’s office at (208) 332-1111 and President Pro Tempore Gedde’s office at (208) 332-1300.