How to encourage your kids to live a low-maintenance life

Have you ever wondered why we often joke that we need to find a low-maintenance better half? We usually do this when we seek suitable partners to date or marry. However, we never considered the importance of raising our children to live a low-maintenance life when we become parents.

Married couples often fear having children due to the high costs involved in raising them. They also hope to hold on to their personal freedom. 

Having children may seem to be the very anti-thesis of the ‘Financial Independence Retire or Rewire Early (Fire)’ millennial mindset. 

Why we decided to teach our son to live a low-maintenance life

My husband and I started our Fire journey in our mid-thirties. With our baby son in tow, we wondered whether gaining Fire was just wishful thinking on our part.

We wondered if we could train him to be a low-maintenance kid. He would then learn to be independent as quickly as possible. In turn, it would help us gain both our financial and personal freedom early. 

There are no books out there that teach kids how to live a low-maintenance life. However, we can find many books on how to be a better parent. We learned a lot from various books written by child experts. Using our worldview, we assimilated the knowledge we gained to share these tips:

Perspective and belief change

To train our son to live a low-maintenance life, the first thing we did was to change our perspective. Before, we held on to our deep-rooted belief that we parents needed to get our children into a good university. By doing this, we lead them into landing good jobs and living stable lives.

Leonard Sax wrote an enlightening book titled The Collapse of Parenting. He is hailed as one of America’s premier child psychologists. In it, he offers a vision for what role we parents ought to take.  It has little to do with making sure our children ace their GPAs.

Additionally, you’re not helping them by training their athletic prowess or garnering them accomplishments. Before, we believed these acts enabled them to get into the top universities. However, we forget to prepare our children for the challenges of the adult world and real life.

It is very difficult for us parents (me included) to accept the fact that success is not the same as fulfilment. Being ordinary is not too bad so long as the child has meaningful work to do, a person to love and a cause to embrace. I have to constantly remind myself that our son should not have his whole identity ride on being accepted at top universities. If I don’t, his whole world will come crashing down when he receives his first rejection letter.

With this perspective change, we will then not spend crazy dollars on renting a home near a well-sought-after primary school to increase his chances. We also refrained from spending good money on preparatory classes to get him into the Gifted Education Programme and an Integrated Programme school.

Teaching gratitude

Studies show that gratitude has the strongest relationship to life satisfaction. It is also particularly beneficial to youngsters. Children who express gratitude often grow to be less materialistic.  They also display generosity towards others and feel positive about themselves. This protects them from stress and depression over time.

In our bid to teach our son, who was eight years old then, not to be a spoilt brat. We decided to sponsor a Cambodian child in an orphanage run by Operation Hope Foundation. Our son helped in selecting his "little brother".

Moreover, his first visit to the orphanage left an indelible mark on him after the trip. He also told us fervently that he no longer wished to receive any more presents from us.  Instead, he urged us to better use the money saved by buying presents for his “little brother” and the kids at the orphanage.  Subsequently, we revisited the orphanage to organise a Christmas party for the orphans. 

When children start secondary school, the peer pressure to keep up with friends with generous pocket money can be intense.  Some friends do not bat an eyelid about spending a lot of money on shoes. They also don’t skimp on dining in restaurants after school or taking Grab rides every day instead of commuting. Thankfully, teaching our son about gratitude helped him self-regulate his emotions.

Travel beats tuition

Many books written by pedagogical experts, futurists, physicians, and psychologists advocate schools downplaying technical skills. Instead, they emphasise general-purpose life skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.

There is consensus that a lot of the knowledge imparted in schools today will likely be redundant by 2050. The skills needed by our children today involve learning to adapt and be mentally adept at coping with the relentless pace of change.

Some subjects like math and science do not figure high in the skills needed in the 21^st Century. Additionally, our children are not failing in these subjects.

Maybe it is time for parents to stop spending a disproportionate amount of their household income on tuition. It’s true our children gain higher marks after getting extra help. However, we believe these classes may lead to a never-ending addiction. As we pay for more classes, our kids tend to rely on them than learn by themselves.

We think it is best not to give our son a crutch. Since he was young. we raised him to pay attention in class as there is no fallback at home. We allocated the remaining tuition budget to travel. We decided this because we believe travelling teaches our kids to navigate the unknown. Plus, most of our trips don’t go according to plan. 

With every hiccup, we want our son to witness how we overcome problems. It also makes our family trips more memorable. Seeing how other cultures lead happy lives despite having lesser means helps put things in perspective.

Meanwhile, whenever I feel insecure regarding my son’s grades, I try very hard to remember the wise words of Jack Ma.

“Our children do not need to be in the top three positions in their class. Being in the middle is fine as this kind of middle-of-the-road student has more free time to learn other skills.”

Treat doing housework like homework

There are many articles written about the benefits of encouraging kids to do family chores.  Not only will it help teach children life skills, but also helps to build their self-esteem and sense of ownership and responsibility.

We need to inculcate in our children that their role in the family does not revolve around their studies. To lead a low-maintenance life, they must learn that their lives do not centre on passing exams with flying colours.

They must also contribute to the family’s well-being by pulling their weight. Urge them to help by participating in weekly marketing or grocery runs. Moreover, we need to regularly assign chores like washing the dishes or cleaning the car.

This especially applies to families with live-in helpers.  Most children from these households don’t lift a finger. They also grow up becoming entitled. When you keep letting your children off the hook for doing chores, it’s like you’re telling them “Your time is too valuable to be spent on menial tasks.” This ends up interpreted over time as “YOU are too important to do menial tasks.”

Because of this, we needed to emphasise doing housework as the "home-based learning" for our son.

Raising our son to be a low-maintenance child is still very much a work-in-progress. But, I hope some of the perspectives shared will serve as food for thought for parents who think Fire and having children do not go well together.

This article was first published in theAsianparent.