Synopsis: Over 35% of the adolescents have lied to their parents, been pressured into doing something illegal, or forced a friend into doing something uncomfortable, all due to peer pressure, according to Survelum Public Data Bank. Find out how to teach kids to resist peer pressure in three steps.

“Dad, isn’t this crazy?!” seven-year-old Lukas marveled. He and his father, Tom, had just finished reading A Strange Gift (Enchanted Collar, No.1) together. “In the book,” Lukas continued with twinkling eyes, “Eli’s Dad is the only one who isn’t crazy. But when everyone else in his kingdom goes mad, they all think Eli’s Dad is mad. Isn’t that crazy?!”

“Yes.” Tom smiled broadly, all too happy to see his son grasping the moral lessons of the book so quickly. “It is crazy, but it’s also true. Just remember, when all the ‘cool’ kids in school tell you that you’re crazy for not doing the same bad things they’re doing, you don’t have to listen to them. It could be that they’re crazy and you’re sane, and that’s why they’re accusing you of being crazy.”

“You’re right, Dad!” exclaimed Lukas. “I don’t have to be crazy like them!”

When Tom related this conversion to me later, I was elated. “This is fantastic, Tom!” I said to him over the phone. “Your son knows how to resist peer pressure.”

“Yes,” Tom agreed. “But I still need to keep reminding him of this lesson whenever peer pressure seems too strong to resist.”

We were all children once. We all remember how much peer pressure we had to withstand as we grew up. We can recall the fear of being rejected by the “cool” crowd when we were young. Unfortunately, as we grow older, peer pressure doesn’t abate. If anything, it intensifies and takes on new forms. 

Peer pressure emanates from all corners of our world—billboards, newsstands, television, Internet, radio. It’s everywhere. We are bombarded with pressure-heavy messages almost every minute of the day: Buy this lotion and you’ll look as beautiful as Cindy Crawford; wear these sneakers and you’ll play basketball like Michael Jordan; use the latest iPad and you’ll be as successful as Steve Jobs. 

Some of us can resist the peer pressure of keeping up with the Joneses. But just like the wolves in Enchanted Collar who become mad, too many of us in real life succumb to the enticement of advertising and marketing. We shop till we drop, ignoring the silent protests from our drained wallets/purses/bank accounts.   In the fantasy world of Enchanted Collar, Eli embarks on an epic journey in search of a cure for the peer pressure of overspending.

In the real world, we undertake the journey of teaching our children to resist peer pressure. If we don’t, not only our bank accounts will suffer, our children will suffer unhappiness, depression, and poor performance in school. Worse, children who give in to peer pressure usually end up engaging in deleterious behaviors, such as using drugs and having sex at a young age.

So how should we teach our children to resist negative peer pressure? Try the following three simple steps:

1. Set a good example ourselves. Children learn more from what we do than what we say. If we’re always busy trying to keep up with the Joneses, we can’t expect our children to say no to pressure from their own peers. If we keep buying the latest designer brands simply because fashion magazines tell us to, we can’t teach our children to resist the peer pressure of spending beyond their means. We have to stand our ground before we can instill the will and the power in our children to resist peer pressure.

2. Help children select the right role models in mass media. Engage in meaningful discussions with your children after you read a book, watch TV, see a movie, or pass a billboard together. Talk to them about what they like or dislike about the characters in stories, shows, or ads. Explore with them whom they want to be like when they grow up and why. To help you get started, the Enchanted Collar books come with a full set of worksheets to help parents guide their children through the moral lessons embedded in the stories.

3. Provide unwavering emotional support to your children. They must have an internal moral compass to steer clear of treacherous paths. They need a solid foundation, an emotional “rock,” someone confident enough to withstand peer pressure. Be that rock for your children. On your car/subway/train trips together, ask them about the events of their day at school. Talk to them about what they did, how they felt, and how they could have reacted differently if necessary. Listen to them with an open heart. Look at things through their eyes. Walk a mile in their shoes. Above all, keep reminding them that when the crowd goes mad, they don’t have to give in to peer pressure and go mad too.

Do you have any suggestions for how we can teach children to resist peer pressure better? Write your comments below.

“Anna, give Mike ten dollars,” I instructed my 11-year-old student.

Anna opened her mouth wide in shock but couldn’t utter a word. She followed my instruction nonetheless and handed over a 10-dollar bill in a slow, measured motion as if it was as heavy as a block of gold. Her pained expression was so sincere and innocent that I couldn’t help bursting into laughter.

Anna was not giving up real money. The 10-dollar bill she gave Mike was nothing more than a piece of paper printed with Enchanted Collar characters and dollar signs. Yet Anna treasured that piece of paper as if it was worth as much as—if not more than—ten real dollars. Her class was playing a game I designed to teach them about business and finance.

Just four weeks earlier, Anna and her fellow students had sneered at these Enchanted Collar toy dollars. One student promptly ripped a dollar bill in half as soon as he realized it wasn’t real money and was ready to throw it into the trash can. Yet four weeks later, the students all wanted it, treasured it, argued over it, and kept it in locked boxes. So what had made the difference?

The answer lies in the hard work they had put in to earn those pieces of paper. I started their finance class with a role-playing business game. Each student applied for a “loan” of Enchanted Collar money from their fellow student “bankers.” At first, the students took the loan for granted. But as soon as the bankers declined the very first loan application for valid reasons—the business plan was poorly organized, and the applicant sounded rude—they all started to take the game and the toy money more seriously. Some students had to present for a second or third time to get their loan applications approved. On top of that, they had to maintain their good performance throughout the game; otherwise the bankers would recall their loans immediately.

When I concluded the five-week course and asked my students to return all of their toy money, the whole class erupted in a chorus of loud groans. No one wanted to part with the toy money, even though these colorfully printed papers couldn’t even buy them a pack of gum. In their hearts and minds, the Enchanted Collar toy money had taken on real, precious value.

What have I learned about teaching children the value of money? I’ve found three crucial steps in making kids understand the value of every single dollar:

1. Make them work for it. Most children know money is something nice to have as soon as they see that it can buy toys, candy, or whatever they desire. However, they won’t value money unless they’ve worked for it. Just as carelessly as they throw away toys, they can squander money if it is given rather than earned. If they can get their hands on money simply by asking you, they will think money magically grows in your wallet. If they can spend money freely with a click of a mouse, they will think there are cyber fairies called Visa, MasterCard, and AmericanExpress that can give them as much money as they want. If you don’t want to be treated as an ATM by your kids, then make them work for the money you give them.

2. Make the work fun and challenging. In my class, children had fun playing the business game and earning the Enchanted Collar toy money. Because they had fun, they now look forward to becoming business owners, doctors, bankers, etc., when they grow up. To them, working and earning money are exciting and adventurous. Their eyes sparkled with delight when they were rewarded with an Enchanted Collar dollar for completing an assignment successfully. Had I made them take a standardized test on the key elements of a business plan, they would have viewed work as boring and earning money as a chore.

3. Give both rewards and penalties. I discovered that the students who got their “loans” on their first try started to slack off in the second round of the business game. They started chatting or loitering, confident that they were set for the rest of the game. So I instituted a new rule: If their performance was rated subpar by their fellow student bankers, they had to pay back their loan plus interest ahead of the maturity date. When they realized they had to work hard not only to get the toy money but also to keep it, they began putting sincere effort into the game. They also started to treasure every Enchanted Collar dollar they earned.

Synopsis: Parents often feel they are overworked and under-appreciated. Find out how to teach children to appreciate their parents' incredible effort of raising a family. 

“Only one hundred dollars?!” twelve-year-old Jason sneered at me. “What can a puny hundred dollars buy?!” I was teaching a basic finance class at an elementary school in New York City, and the topic of the day was how to convince bankers to lend the students one hundred dollars to start a business.

With twenty-five pairs of young eyes trained on me for an answer, I felt a rush of sadness. How have our children lost their appreciation for money? As far as I know, they don’t work and all the money they have is given to them by their parents. How could I teach these children to appreciate every dollar their parents earn for them?

In the past three years, we have witnessed a severe recession and massive layoffs. While parents struggle with longer work hours and less pay, their children still want the latest Ugg boots and Barbour coats. If parents dare to say no, children often counter in frustration, “What do you mean we can’t afford it? Can’t you just get money out of the ATM?”

Until parents explain to their children what it takes for money to keep rolling out of ATMs, children will take those green bills for granted. They will also take your hard work  for granted. It will be impossible for children to fully appreciate the holiday gifts you give them if they don’t know how hard you have to work to pay for those gifts.

That’s one of the reasons I wrote the Enchanted Collar series—to help parents teach their children to appreciate the incredible effort that goes into raising a family. In the Enchanted Collar stories, Eli had no idea of money’s worth in Book 1, squandered his mother’s entire savings on one meal in Book 2, had to work in a restaurant to pay off his debt in Book 3, and finally gained a sincere appreciation for money and hard work in Book 4.

If you want your children to understand and appreciate your hard work, which manifests in food, shelter, other necessities, and gifts,  share with them the Enchanted Collar stories and show them what it takes to earn a living. Let your children learn financial lessons through the eyes and hearts of Eli, Earl, Elda, and Skipper. Teach them to appreciate every single dollar you earn for them. Teach them to appreciate you.

Synopsis: Financial history is full of boom and bust. To prevent the next financial crisis, we must teach our children about the basic of finance. Learn how to talk to kids about money in a fun and exciting way.

In late 2009, I was at an investment conference where Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, was the keynote speaker. He appeared to be fit and confident. Who could blame him? His company seemed the only bank that had survived the recent financial holocaust.

“My daughter in college called me the other day,” Mr. Dimon smiled into the microphone, “and she asked, ‘Dad, everyone is talking about the financial crisis on TV. What is a financial crisis?’” The entire audience gawked at him, anticipating something profound.

“I said,” Mr. Dimon continued, “‘that’s just something that happens every four or five years.’” The auditorium erupted into laughter.

I laughed but then felt a sudden chill. Financial crises happen every four or five years? Seriously? As a technology analyst on Wall Street, I lived through the dot-com bubble-bust Eight years later, as an emerging markets analyst, I witnessed firsthand the subprime crisis reverberate throughout the entire world. Crises happen every four or five years? How scary is that?

After voraciously reading volumes of books on the causes and aftermaths of financial crises, I realized that Mr. Dimon was right: History does repeat itself every four or five years. But why? Americans have a saying: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. But somehow sage sayings do not seem to apply to the financial market. Why have we been fooled repeatedly and fallen into financial peril every four or five years?

Maybe a similar Chinese saying would shed some light on why we fail to escape repeated mistakes: Bitten by a snake once, one suffers fear for ropes for the rest of his life. When we suffer trauma once in life, our natural tendency is to bury that memory to avoid further pain. Unfortunately, when human nature is applied to finance, it tends to bring us repeated disasters.

When bills pile up, many of us are inclined to sweep them underneath the rug rather than deal with them head on. When the balance in our bank accounts seems to be far lower than what we thought, we are more comfortable ignoring it than digging out all receipts, punching our calculators, and balancing our checkbooks to the penny. When we get burned by a financial crisis once, we avoid thinking about it or learning from it. Thus history repeats.

Unfortunately, time does not heal financial wounds. Rather, it aggravates them. The more aversion we have for dollars and cents, the more disorganized our finances become and the more gut-wrenching it is for us to face bills and credit card statements. The vicious cycle goes on without end, not only in our own lives, but also in our children’s lives and their children’s lives.

Those of us who are uncomfortable with our own financial state tend to avoid talking to our children about money at all cost. Then our children grow up, ignorant about money matters, and repeat the financial mistakes that we made and desperately wanted them to avoid. Our financial follies become hereditary. We pass our mistakes on to our children without realizing it. There is only one way to end the vicious circle: Face our fears head on, get financially savvy, and talk openly with our children about money matters.

The Enchanted Collar™ series can serve as an icebreaker for you to broach the dicey subject of money with your children. You may find it a lot easier to ask your children, “If you were Eli, what would you have done in a similar situation?,” than merely harping about savings and budgeting.

After all, no matter how old we grow, we all want to have fun. Deep inside, there is an ageless child at heart in all of us. So why don’t we indulge the little kid inside once in a while and enjoy the life’s journey through the eyes of a little wolf, a pig, a squirrel, and a cougar?