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At a recent youth retreat my 12-year-old nephew, Joey, was called up on stage along with four other preteens. Each participant had a box of tissues set in front of them. They were told, “at the word GO your challenge is to be the first person to remove all the tissues from the box. The winner will receive a large box of candy.”

At Go, four of the middle schoolers began to frantically remove the tissues from the box, one at a time. Joey, looking puzzled, watched his frenzied competitors for a moment, picked up his box, ripped off the top and pulled all the tissues out at once. Done!

When I asked him later how he came up with that idea he said, “It was the fastest way to get them out of the box.”

Critical thinking – being able to look at a problem, analyze it, and come up with a creative and effective solution – is one of the most important skills our children can learn. Critical and creative thinking skills help us make good decisions and solve problems. Those children with good critical thinking skills will be more successful as adults.

Joey saw the problem, thought outside the box, and emptied his box to receive his reward.  So how do we raise kids who think like this? How do we raise kids who can look at a situation and come up with creative and alternative ways to address it?

Here are 3 easy ways you can encourage critical and creative problem solving in your own kids.

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When my youngest was two he suddenly became obsessed with Halloween.

I’m sure a lot of my own enthusiasm for the holiday had something to do with it. As an American living in the U.K., I wanted my children to experience my favorite holiday. So, I threw a big party.

This became an annual tradition and it grew. Soon, I was renting the local village hall and inviting all thirty of my eldest son’s classmates. My youngest loved the scary characters, crafts, songs, and costumes, but his Halloween fixation continued long after Halloween.

As December approached I couldn’t interest him in Santa or snowmen or anything else having to do with Christmas. He wanted me to read him Halloween stories and he demanded Halloween songs at bedtime. I only knew two Halloween songs and I was getting fed up with them.

I soon started adapting classic songs to give them a Halloween twist. “How Much is that Doggy in the Window?” became “How Much is that Vampire in the Window?” My father-in-law came up with “99 Scary Monsters on the Wall” in lieu of “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”. That quickly became a favorite.

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“Noooo!”

His high-pitched shout echoed down the hall.

“Buddy, please just go put on your shoes. I don’t want to ask you again.”

“I don’t want to!”

I sighed loudly as I braced myself for yet another showdown.

My five-year-old had been pushing all my buttons for weeks. He was cranky and would balk at the simplest requests. The sass had reached an all-time high.

On top of that, he was incredibly needy even though we were spending almost every day together.

I was at my wits end, and I felt like our relationship was really struggling. It was one of those seasons in parenting when I was at a complete loss for what to do next, even though I knew something had to change.

Ever been there?

If you have, you know it’s not a fun place to be.

It was during this time of desperately searching for some solution, when a parenting webinar led me to the work of Dr. Laura Markham and her book, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting.

The title immediately caught my eye. I longed for a peace-filled home, and of course I wanted happy kids. What parent doesn’t?

Sheer frustration had me yelling way more than I ever imagined I would, and I knew the connection with my son was suffering greatly as a result. This book couldn’t arrive fast enough!

I dove right in, and when I read the section about spending special time with kids, a light bulb went off.

I realized although my son was around me for a significant part of each day, we often weren’t spending quality one-on-one time together. With his little brother to care for, along with the general busyness of life, I just wasn’t paying enough attention to him. (It pains me to say that aloud.)

His neediness that, at times, was downright exhausting was a clue. His defiance and cranky attitude? Also clues. I was not giving him the connection time that he needed.

I didn’t know if having special time with my son was going to bring harmony back to our relationship, but I was eager to give it a shot.

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A lot of times, I find myself struggling with the urge to buy that new trendy phone (which I don’t need anyway).

Or eating out at lunch rather than bringing one in from home.

Or buying my kids a toy when they’ve been especially good.

Sound familiar?

Early last week I attended a personal finance seminar that left me thinking. Would I want my kids to manage their finances like I do? How am I doing in keeping up with my saving goals? Am I going to have enough for those big things I need? How about retirement? And what am I teaching my kids about spending versus saving money?

In our daily lives, we are bombarded by multiple messages urging us to spend. From TV commercials to web banner ads, the message is the same: BUY ME!

With consumerism being normalized as a vital part of our daily lives, the time is ripe to teach our kids the value of money as early as their preschool years.

There are many reasons why starting early is important. One, kids absorb knowledge faster at this age. They then form habits that they take with them into their adulthood.

Alfred Adler, in his groundbreaking individual psychology theory, remarks that a child’s attitude towards the problems of life is governed by their childhood experiences. In fact, a Cambridge University study shows that adult money habits are set by age seven.

Secondly, we do not want our children to be part of the negative credit card statistics. In a personal finance survey for college students by Lend EDU, 59% of students surveyed graded themselves below average in successfully managing their finances. 41% of the 455 surveyed saved less than 10% of their monthly income.

Teaching kids the value of money helps with the setting of specific savings goals during their adult life. Without specific goals, saved money can easily be withdrawn for impulse buying and overspending.

Finally, you never know what is going to happen. Recessions happen. Employers go out of  business. Cars need repairs. The roof needs replacing.

There are literally a thousand different emergencies that can happen and all of them require money. If you don’t have that rainy day fund saved your credit cards are going to take a hit and then you’re going to have to dig yourself out of the hole.

It is therefore important to teach our kids the value of money. These 4 tips will get you started on the beautiful journey to teaching consumer smarts.

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“Daaaaaaad!!!!! Get it!!!! NOW!!!!”

My 3 year old points to the street, where my husband had just set out the trash, at the bags of aqua green flitting in the wind.

She can’t stand it. The sight of anything BLOWING. It fills her with anxiety and dread. You can see it on her face. My husband has to run out to the curb and retrieve the bags he just moments before hefted toward the street.

When he comes back in through the door, her little body relaxes and she goes about her business. I look at my husband and give a whisper of thanks.

I, too, was just there last week. Running like an idiot through the parking lot of Walmart to chase a flyaway bag because I thought she was going to have a heart attack.

Or the time I heard screaming coming from the bathroom. “MAKE IT STOPPPP!”

I thought something terrible had happened.

I raced into the bathroom to nothing spectacular, much to my relief. Just the towels on the towel bar blossoming slightly upward from the force of furnace air emanating from the register.

Then it all came back to me. The garbage bags. The parking lot. The wind. All of these factors equaled one thing and one thing only: they made my girl ANXIOUS.

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