I was passing by a signboard for Tumbletots the other day and it immediately brought to mind the funny experience we had signing Steev up for it. Our friends signed up their daughter, also aged around 18 months at the time.

Of course, at the time, being first-time parents, we were excited about the prospect of introducing our kids to a new set of motor skills, shared play and social skills. Each week, we looked forward to bringing our kids there.

Within a month, it became quite clear that while our friend’s daughter was enjoying herself and having a ball with the singing, dancing and climbing activities, Steev wasn’t the least bit interested. In fact, I ended up doing all the activities while Steev sat there and amused himself with watching us make fools of ourselves!

Okay, so that’s it! We decided to call it quits and left our friends and their daughter to enjoy themselves. Clearly not all programs are suited to all kids and it’s hard to tell unless you try it out.

Our friend’s daughter enjoyed it tremendously and they couldn’t understand why Steev wasn’t interested at all. Each child is different and even at a very young age, many already exhibit their preferences.

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We all know how quickly kids tend to outgrow their clothes and their clothes don’t come cheap these days. Here are some ways you can save money and reduce spending on kiddy clothes.

Hand-me-downs from older kids (siblings, cousins, friends) are a good way to save. Some folks throw out clothes their kids can no longer wear. I think that’s a waste. So long as the clothes are still in good condition, they’re still good for wearing around the house.

Buy clothes that are one or two sizes bigger so your child can wear them for a longer time. If you buy the exact size, your child will soon outgrow them.

Take advantage of sales and buy them in a bigger size. T-shirts and shorts don’t go out of fashion and can be kept to be worn later.

It seems even kids know about Online Learning these days. A teacher friend of mine had a young student tell her that he’d rather be home playing computer games.

But you need an education, she replied. The ten-year-old replied that he can educate himself through online learning at home, dividing his time between that and his computer games.

This really cracks me up. Of course, he’s too young for that but it is true that Capella University does offer courses that make getting a degree at your own pace possible.

There’s no shortage of courses to choose from as they now offer over 100 undergraduate and graduate courses. That little boy will have to wait a while but pretty soon he too will be able to benefit from the flexibility of online learning .

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I just saw a little girl no more than 8 years of age walking around at the neighborhood stores all by herself. I looked around to see if she was with any adults. Nope, it sure didn’t look that way.

There’s something that I just don’t understand about some parents. After all these recent cases of children going missing and turning up dead on many occasions, it seems they still don’t get the message and leave their young kids to run around on their own.

So what does it take to get parents to realize the dangers of leaving their kids unaccompanied?

No point dismissing the kids early from school because kidnappings are completely random so it could happen no matter what time of day or night.

No point hoping the publicity would make parents aware because it’s an attitude problem more than anything else in most cases.

It looks like my niece (aged 3.5 years) and nephew (aged 3) are both in school. And they’re not the only ones. It’s common for kids to start school at around age 2 these days.

Am I imagining things or are kids indeed starting school (albeit nursery school) earlier and earlier in life? I’m doing the math here. That works out to be 4.5 years in pre-school !! Wow, I’m wondering if that adds up to too many years in school.

My kids had only 2 years of pre-school (which we thought was plenty at the time!) and already they were pretty bored by the second year. I was working fulltime at the time. If I’d been home, I would’ve used that time to teach and bond with them.

But as it was, I thought pre-school would be a good place for them to pick up some social skills and discipline to prep for ‘real’ school. That was literally the only reason I sent my kids in 2 years ahead of time.

I’m no early childhood expert but my experience as a mom tells me that 4.5 years is overdoing it! Kids learn fast these days and they get bored easily. I agree each child is different but I’m inclined to think that in general, less is more.

If one of the parents is home with the kids, I don’t see any reason for sending them to school so early. Their time could be better spent on learning activities with the parent, like going on field trips, doing art and craft and the 3Rs.

What are your thoughts? Do you think starting at 2 is too early? What age did your kids start pre-school?

I teach my kids, on a regular basis, that they shouldn’t spend more money than they have in their pockets. This is a sound financial lesson to teach kids from the time they are young.

While it’s true that there are always Credit Cards For Bad Credit that they can apply for, complete with good rates and rewards, from sites like CreditCardSearchEngine.com, I still believe that kids should be taught to manage their money as soon as they’re old enough to do so.

You can always start with giving them an allowance and teach them how to manage that. Instead of you buying their small items, you could have them pay for them instead with your guidance.

I’ve seen a mother at Skye’s school who drives a pickup truck to, what else, pick up her kids from school. She lets her kids swing their backpacks into the open back of the truck and climb in.

Of course, it’s very dangerous for them to ride on the back like that without even a back rack for support.

They’re available online from BuyAutoTruckAccessories.com which carries a wide range of quality truck accessories at reasonable prices.

But still I can’t help but think the open back of the truck should be for goods, not kids. Even if it’s a short ride home, I wouldn’t allow my kids to do that.

We started Steev in kindy when he was five thinking it was the place where he could go to learn some social skills. Being first time parents then, we just went with our gut feeling that five was a good age.

But Steev quickly became bored with the repetitive nature of kindy learning where he had to keep repeating the alphabets, nursery rhymes and stories he’d already heard before.

He started walking around the classroom. He was a quiet little guy so he really wasn’t disturbing anyone. He just needed something new and different to fuel his quick learning mind.

His teachers knew him too well and would let him wander around to the bookshelf behind the class to quietly read a book. Sometimes he’d just look out the window deriving some strange inspiration from there, I suppose .

When it came Raine’s and Skye’s turn at kindy, we only enrolled them when they were six. We’d learnt our lesson with Steev, so we decided one year of kindy is enough even though our well-meaning friends and relatives tried to convince us otherwise.

Everyone we knew was sending their kids to kindy at 4 or 5 years of age. So they were convinced our kids would be missing out a lot by starting school so late.

How old were your kids when they first started school?

A friend invited us to her daughter’s birthday party at McDonald’s last weekend. Her daughter is 2 and my kids are teens. Obviously they’re not keen to go to a kiddy party and I don’t blame them.

I think she should be inviting kids her daughter’s age to make it more fun. The older kids are just going to be bored out of their minds going to a McDonald’s party.

For a while, I wasn’t sure how to tell her. Finally I decided to be honest and upfront about it and tell her that my kids are a little too old for that and hoped that she wouldn’t take offense. I bought her a nice present from my kids so I guess that settles it.