Thursday, March 1, 2012

Raising Free-Thinking Entrepreneurs


My daughter Tiffany, has always been highly sensitive. She likes things a certain way, and likes to feel abundance in every area of her life. She loves "things" and loves money. She enjoys collections and organization. She likes things clean and set up in a certain way that she can find everything she is looking for. Over the years, we have learned ways to help her get more of what she wants in life, rather than be the wall between she and her desires. This mindset is very different than the cultural idea of control in a child's life. I know that Tiff loves the thrill of the hunt when it comes to acquiring new things. We shop at thrift stores and yard sales to help meet this need within her. As she has grown, her collections and interests cost more money so this has led to us finding ways to creatively help her earn more money than a mere allowance provides.

Tiff recently asked Joe to take all the money she saved to the bank and get all one-dollar-bills with it. He gladly did this for her and I was so grateful to him. Town is a good hour drive round trip and for him to take time out of his busy day to do this for his daughter warmed my heart. Here is Tiff feeling the true abundance of her money.


We recently helped Tiff start her own pet-sitting business called, "Tiff's Pet Sitting." We put an ad in the paper for her and helped her market her new business. We received several inquiries! The best fit for her was a family who had two little dogs who needed in home care. We met with them and it was such a great match! Tiff will be getting paid $125 for a week of watching them, in our home, with my assistance and support.
Helping our children earn money in creative ways is something that we have learned to do as we have gone down this amazing path of a Radical Unschooling life. Devin has his own Etsy shop where he makes and sells wooden swords and Steampunk items. His shop is called, Freepunkd


Raising free-thinking entrepreneurs is such an incredible benefit to Unschooling. Our children do not hear that they can have their own businesses "someday." They have them NOW. They have such a head-start in comparison to children in school when it comes to living in the real world, pursuing their passions and making money from them. Our family has many businesses at this point in our life with multiple streams of income. Our children have learned so much about marketing and business through living a connected life rich with resources to nurture their interests. I want my children to know that they can always have whatever they want in life, but sometimes they need to get creative to manifest what they want. This includes the desire to help others in various ways. We recently wanted to buy my parents a Vitamix blender and we pulled together as a family to figure out how we could make money to do that for them.

When a child lives in abundance and love, their cup is overflowing with love to give to others. This is the opposite mindset of what our culture preaches - that abundance will "spoil" a child. In our experience, helping our children get what they want in life shows them that there is enough to go around and helping others get what they need in life is just part of life! Helping friends, neighbors, our community and the Earth is so important to our kids. Whenever we travel, one of Devin's favorite things to do is pick up trash in that particular area. We bring trash bags with us for just that purpose. Tiff has such a big heart for animals wherever we go. She looks forward to helping animals in need in her future. My children know that being "at service," is an important part of life. We model this for our children.

When we help our children, they in turn help others. I truly believe in seeing our children as whole, perfect people in all of their desires. I assume positive intent from my children and they feel this. I am never the wall between them and what they want in life. They know that we will always help them obtain their desires, and they in turn help me in so many ways!

Love and abundance begets love and abundance.

~Peace & Love, Dayna

1 comment:

Patrick and Emily said...

Too funny. My children were working on many areas of their businesses today.
One thing I see is your children and mine were not born into families that could give them anything they want on a whim.
They see the real life end of things. They know having something takes work. They see us do it and also do it themselves.
I like that.