The school year is well underway for millions of children around the country who are grappling with the difficulties of being kids - issues we adults can forget at times.
Our problems - office politics, the mortgage, caring for aging loved ones - seem so much bigger than the things our children have to face in their lives.
What many of us don't realize, though, is what happens in childhood affects us our entire lives.
Our subconscious is completely formed by the time we are six years old.
So the majority of our actions and reactions got their roots before we even hit the first grade.
Your childhood No one has total control of their emotions 100 percent of the time.
When we face conflict, we won't always be able to handle the situation without going a little bit off the deep end.
During those moments when restraint goes out of the window, we tap into our subconscious and our deepest feelings - the ones that shape us - come to light.
For example, pretty much all of us are taught from a young age that setting personal boundaries is selfish.
And as adults, even when something makes us uncomfortable, we sometimes feel like we have to go along with things because that's what we are supposed to do.
When was the last time your coworkers went for post-work cocktails and pressured you into going, even though you knew it was over your budget? These types of scenarios have been happening to you your entire life.
Like when you were peer-pressured into drinking after your junior prom, or when the other kids teased you at summer camp because your clothes were too different from everyone else's.
We've essentially recreated familiar situations we faced in childhood and replicated them in our adulthood.
The only difference between what happened to us in childhood and what's happening now is that our finances are greatly affected by our decisions.
Reflect So this week, while your kids are doing homework, spend some time reflecting on your own childhood experiences.
What did you do with your allowance - spend it all or save it? Did your parents encourage you to use your money a certain way? Think about the different situations you were in during your childhood and teenage years.
Journal about the things that come to mind.
What were some of the things you wrote down? Did you quickly spend your allowance or did you tightly hold on to it? Were you the leader of your pack or a shy type that went along with what your friends did? Look over the things you wrote.
What do you feel when you remember those childhood experiences? And how does that feeling shift when you think about how those experiences affect you today? Here's an example.
When you would go shopping with your group of friends in high school, you felt pressured to buy something when everyone else in the group had a shopping bag.
You didn't want to feel left out, and you eased your anxiety by doing what the others did.
As you grew older, you never kicked that feeling of needing to purchase something - anything - when someone close to you got something new for themselves.
You never grew out of that anxiety; it grew right along with you.
So why is this anxiety so hard to kick? Most unhealthy behaviors are the result of two types of internal emotional conflict: having needs that aren't met or having trouble setting personal boundaries.
When you look over the things you wrote down, I'm willing to be that all of them fall within these two categories.
And if those experiences still give you feelings of shame, anger or resentment, now is as good of a time as any to reroute those feelings.