If you want to leave a legacy for your children, don't wait.
"People need to realize that legacies should be lived, not left," Tripp Fiedler said in a news release. Fieldler is author of "Free Gulliver: Six Swift Lessons on Life Planning" (Trost Publishing, $19.95).
Fiedler, who is a financial consultant and estate planner, offered these insights in the release:
* "Legacy" and "inheritance" aren't synonymous. Most people think a legacy is what you leave when you die -- especially money. But you also leave memories. Think of how you'd like to be remembered and make some memories with your family.
* History matters. Tell your kids where they came from and help them have a solid sense of extended family. Share family stories. It helps children understand themselves and their place in the world.
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* Start new family traditions.
* Live your values. Be aware of the unspoken messages you send to your children. What you do is more powerful than what you say.
* Be emotionally present with your kids. Engage your child in conversation or do something such as bake a cake with your child or build a fort. Be the kind of mother or father you want your child to remember.
* Giving kids too much money and too few boundaries is destructive.
* To teach kids to manage money, give them a big allowance and have them use it for everything. Fieldler gives his 15-year-old daughter $50 a week, but she has to use it for all her entertainment and consumer spending. When it's gone, it's gone.
Vehicle crashes are the top killer of American teens. Almost 6,000 teens die each year in vehicle crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Administration.
To help teens improve their driving, the Ford Motor Co. and the Governors Highway Safety Association developed the Driving Skills for Life teen safety program.
The program offers an interactive Web site, www.drivingskillsfor life.com, that includes learning modules, a safe-driving quiz and a chance to play safe-driving games. Some of the features on the site award points that teens can use to enter prize drawings for such things as a laptop computer, digital camera, gift certificates and Ford die cast vehicles.
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The site also offers tips for parents and educators.
Choosing a child care provider is a crucial decision many parents make.
To help in that choice, the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies has published a guide to help parents identify high-quality child care. The guide is called "Is This the Right Place for My Child?: 38 Research-based Indicators of High Quality Child Care."
"The quality of care a child receives during the first five years of life is critical because 90 percent of brain development occurs during those years," Linda K. Smith, the association's executive director, said in a news release.
The booklet includes a list of questions for parents to ask when checking out child-care programs and explains how each question relates to the quality of care, the release said.
Some of the key questions are:
* Have the adults been trained to care for the children?
* Will my child be able to grow and learn?
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* Is the program well-managed?
* Does the program work with parents?
Go to www.childcareaware.org to download a free electronic copy.
Suggestions of items for Family Matters can be mailed to Linda Hanson, Duluth News Tribune, 424 W. First St. Duluth, MN 55802; e-mailed to lhanson@duluthnews.com ; or faxed to (218) 720-4120. Deadline is 12 days before publication.
