How much do you interfere when your kids have money to spend? Or, if you don’t have any children, how much did your parents interfere?
Whenever I take Akra Jr and Li’l Bhaji shopping to spend their pocket or birthday money, I really have to fight the desire to heckle. There is so much utter crap out there manufactured purely to part the naive with their cash – plastic tat that falls apart the moment you get it home, stuff that’s priced twice as much as equivalent toys because it has a film character on it, DS games that an amoeba would find hard to stay interested in after half an hour’s play.
I want to tell them to save their money for something really special, that they’ll appreciate and get a lot of play out of. My natural instinct is to point out each and every flaw in their prospective purchases. I confess that at the start of them getting their own money, I gave into that instinct a lot of the time.
However, I started to realise that my criticisms were completely poisoning the thrill of having money to spend – of being the proverbial kid in a toy shop. It’s their choice, their money, not mine. If I control every purchasing decision they make, how will they ever learn to look after their cash?
So these days, I’m doing my best to take a step back. I still have the ultimate power of veto on potentially dangerous or age inappropriate toys and games of course, but otherwise it’s their call. Which is why we ended up coming home from town yesterday with two packets of GoGos, two GoGo sticker books, two extortionately-priced Star Wars action figures and two DS games (one of which was discarded on the first day as “boring”) with only a teeny bit of heckling.
Please let them learn quickly, biting my tongue hurts.
6 responses so far ↓
1 famousamy // 27th May 2009 at 8:09 pm
Had an awesome reply and the site ate it because I didn’t provide my email. (It doesn’t say it’s required.)
OK.. retry.
—————————–
You know we haven’t hit this with Isabella yet, so take my advice with a grain of salt..
Maybe try talking to them about commercialism and marketing approaches. Not when you’re out with them shopping for their items, but before hand in an unrelated discussion (so they don’t feel like you’re ruining their fun). Talk to them about why commercials are necessary (often because the item isn’t good enough to sell on it’s own) and what kinds of prices seem good vs. bad.
And when a toy that they’ve bought – that seems over-priced to you – breaks or just loses it’s excitement long before it should’ve, you can bring up those conversations and use it as a learning point. That way they start that thinking process on their own.
That’s my two cents.
2 Ys // 28th May 2009 at 10:50 am
Well as you know I don’t have any kids of my own so how my parents did it was to not interfere at all. I was also sensible with money – it was just always in me. But my sisters were/are not and my parents just let them get on with it.
I think I personally would encourage them to save but they’re only small with you so I think there’s probably plenty of time before money has to become a serious issue.
3 GoodTwin // 28th May 2009 at 1:10 pm
Looking back, I don’t think I got to spend my money at all! My Mum used to tell us we should save up, swipe the loot and put it in our savings account. Weekly pocket money was regularly filtered from the piggy tank* as well. In fact, by the time I was a teenager I was hiding money if I knew I had a parent’s birthday/anniversary coming up just so I’d have something to go and spend, otherwise it’d be in Fort Knox without any access to it. :-)
But my Mum wasn’t mean, we weren’t deprived. If we wanted something they would generally find the money for it – or my grandparents would. In all, I grew up appreciating money and learning what was worth buying or not) if Mum said No, No it was) and now have far more savings than many people.
Having said all that, I think the right thing to do is both let them spend on whatever they want but also make them save some of the money. Maybe 2/3, 1/3?
* That’s not a typo – it genuinely was a wooden box shaped like a tank :-)
4 Pewari // 28th May 2009 at 8:10 pm
Some good thoughts here, thank you :)
5 Jane // 29th May 2009 at 8:43 am
I’m for tongue-biting. We were in a zoo giftshop after Christmas and my two each had a present “owing” from their grandparents so we let them pick something out. Of course it was plastic tat, and of course it fell apart (IIRC one item broke the same day). But that kind of lesson you have to learn from experience. I don’t think it’s right to say they can choose something and then veto their every suggestion (unless totally age inappropriate etc.) But it wasn’t easy to watch :-)
On a similar note: #1 had one euro from the tooth fairy and wanted to spend it. We spent a long time in Woolworths’ toy dept. looking at prices and of course #1 quickly found that his money wouldn’t go far. There were a couple of items within his budget, but in the end he decided to save up for something he really wanted, rather than blowing his money on something he could afford right away but wasn’t that keen on. Again a somewhat painful procedure, but he learned a lot from it (and I learned that next time we do that I’ll leave the two younger ones at home!)
6 Paula // 29th May 2009 at 9:10 pm
Ah, Go-go crazy bones.
Or as they are known in this house.
“Ow! Ow! Who left that on the floor!!!!”
Worse than Lego for bare feet pain.
The views expressed in these comments are not the views of the publisher. However, we believe in the rights of others to express their legitimate views and concerns. Any legitimate complaint emailed to pewari@may.be will be seriously considered and the post reviewed as desirable and necessary.
Leave a Comment