MINNEAPOLIS, Minn — A parenting coach on TikTok became an online sensation after offering moms and dads a bit of advice on kids and allowance.
"I blew up overnight," said parenting coach Lisa Bunnage. "My daughter said 'You have to go on TikTok mom it's for you,' and I said that 'I am not a 12-year-old dancer... I'm an old woman.' What the heck is anyone going to look at me… and I literally blew up overnight."
Not that she's a flavor of the month: Bunnage has been coaching parents on the art of raising children for the past 17 years. "There's no perfect way," she reflected. "There's no Ph.D. in parenting. Nobody really has it figured out."
Despite the fact she's only been on TikTok for one year, Lisa already has well over 500,000 followers because of videos like this one, with more than 3 million views.
"I get parents from all walks of life, all different problems," said Bunnage. "Sometimes they just have a toddler that's just climbing up on a fridge. Other times it's a teen crisis thing. So I never know what I am going to get… that's what I love about it."
Although Bunnage says she doesn't know why certain videos go viral, her hunch is those that blow up are easier for parents to grasp... like her latest viral TikTok on giving your children allowance.
"They deserve to get allowance no matter what, no matter how good or not good they are being," said Bunnage. "That's a gimme. They deserve to earn money to learn how to earn money."
Lisa calls her model "Mom's Bank," and it starts at age three with a dollar a week at a high-interest rate of 10 percent. If one of Lisa's children wanted to withdraw cash they had to discuss everything with mom before any physical cash was handed out.
"They would say 'Mom I want to buy something'… OK, that's $40 out of your allowance, that means it would go down to this balance and it would take 17 weeks to get back to where you were. And they would often go 'Oh never mind!' It just made them stop and think before they spent," said Bunnage.
The one thing Lisa says parents shouldn't be paying their kids for... is chores.
"You live here you clean up after yourself… that's just a gimmee," Bunnage explains. "How on earth do you think you should raise people to not clean up their own messes? I have no concept of that."
Bunnage says the BIGGEST problem parents are creating for themselves is a major lack of tough love. She believes if you are not disciplining your kids, how can they have "self" discipline?
You can watch Lisa Bunnage's videos on her website addressing everything from talking to your teen about sex to getting a toddler to stop biting kids at daycare. Yep, she covers it all.
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