Train Bank and Monsters
My 5-year-old son has discovered desire’s connection to this medium called money, as well as the art of peppering discussions of commerce with persuasive key phrases:
“Mom, can I have Sir John?” (A GeoTrax character that costs around $25 at Target.)
“I think it’s in the toy insection. It’s not too expensive! I think it costs … five dollars!”
“Please?”
“Pretty please?”
“Hmmm. Mommy? How about, we can go to Target and buy Sir John. That sounds like a good idea!”
Repeat, substituting “Iron Man costume,” “all the Thomas the Train characters,” and “a sparkly motorcycle with a sidecar.”
As usual, his development is ahead of our plans to develop the perfect “teachable moment” strategy. While I was out of town for a week, my husband started paying him money for chores. He grasped the concept immediately and with great enthusiasm. “I want to earn some money!”
I, on the other hand, thought we would give him an allowance, (a weekly amount of half the child’s age is suggested) the logic being that kids then won’t refuse to do chores when the allure of earning wears off. They learn the value of money, and the things they are responsible for buying themselves.
The problem is in the communicating of any of these ideas, as anything that is not an immediate logistical concern gets lost in the fray. Our conversations tend to go like this:
“How was your day?”
“Well fine except … hey stop doing that! Sit down on your flat bottom and eat your dinner! So the repair shop called and … not now, your daddy and I need to talk to each other!”
Etc., until bath and bedtime have been executed, and we sit down next to each other. Mute, spent.
So what do you do about teaching kids about money?
On Monday, needing to sweep and mop anyway, I enlisted my son’s help, and paid him $5.
Too much? Probably. I really, really want him to be able to reach his goal before he forgets all about it. Counting the money with him in his train bank, I realized that the $5 was the lion’s share.
—
“How much did you pay him for chores?” I email my husband.
“I have not been keeping track,” he replies. “I think he helped me with various things for $2 here and there, but I’m not sure I ever handed the money over. I may have stuck a $5 in his bank. Or maybe it was just a $1. How much is it worth for him to help me put way the dishes? $0.25? $0.50? Please don’t make me sound like an inattentive dad.”
As if.
No, I get it. It’s the same as when he comes home to a riot of chairs overturned, the floor carpetbombed with styrofoam confetti and littered with the corpses of plastic monsters, me sprawled next to the kids, the merry rioters. “What happened here?” he’ll say. I shrug, and give him a look that says, “What do you want? We’re all still alive.”
–
We dumped out my son’s train bank on his bed, and I helped him count the money, stacking the dollars, grouping the quarters, sorting the rest of the coins by descending value — a lesson I could tell that is so far lost on him. How did I learn this? I wondered.
He helped me throw it all back in the bank. Total: $8.50.
“Now we can buy Sir John!”
“Well, not yet, pretty soon,” I call to his receding back, already half out of the room and on to the next thing.
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Tags: allowance · chores · Kiplinger10 Comments
Good post, tough topic! My five year old is DYING for another “Cars” car, or another “Thomas” train. I am trying to time buying something small like that to an event (his upcoming preK graduation) or being really, REALLY good for something like a week. I don’t think he’s ready yet to “get” money — or maybe I’m not teaching him? Hmmm. Have to have a talk with hubby about the allowance thing. I never got it, and did chores because, you know, I had to — which I think (for me) will be the right approach.
We can do some sort of hybrid… weekly allowance tied to some basic expectations (take your plate to the sink, put your clothes in the hamper, etc.) and then extra money for special chores. I have a feeling there is posterboard, markers and stickers in our future…
Oh, yeah. Getting their attention is half the problem. Keeping your own attention focused is the other half.
This is one of the hardest issues I ever dealt with as a parent — and probably one of my biggest failures. Trouble is, it takes consistency over a span of years, and sometimes you just don’t have it in you. Or I didn’t, at least. Better luck to you!
My kids are teens now. We tried allowance. We always forgot to dole it out until nobody could remember how much was owed. My organizational failure.
Now? No allowance. No paid chores. Chores are an expectation of living under a roof with food and indoor plumbing. However, I maintain a list of “jobs” that are beyond usual chore obligations (washing windows, washing car…) that they can do if they need to earn money. It’s a tough topic.
I love the line about how your son’s development is ahead of your plans to have a teachable moment! And I can totally relate to how you try to talk to your husband but get interrupted a million times and then once the kids are in bed you’re too tired to say a word. That’s the story of our lives!
I don’t think you should pay a child to do household chores though I do think some kind of allowance is in order. But my idea of an allowance, which we will start with my daughter when she turns ten this summer, is $1/week at most!
The chore thing is important. You find age-appropriate tasks and you make sure they get into a rhythm of doing them. It may take longer to get them to do it than to do the chore yourself but it’s important to stick with it.
My 5-year-old son takes the clean laundry out of the dryer and onto the bed, and advances the wet laundry to the dryer and turns the dryer on. He also takes out the compost when it’s his turn. I don’t think he has enough chores, frankly, and he sometimes balks about doing them, but I see since we’ve started this system (only a few months ago) that it makes his feel capable and responsible and like he’s part of our family team.
Sounds just like my little brother! He made up something called the “Six Week Plan” where he would get a new GI JOE every six weeks, but then he realized how long six weeks is and it contracted into four weeks and then two weeks. He’s out of college now and I could say he outgrew that phase, but … I guess he gets points for negotation skills. My Mom told me recently that she always gave us our allowance on Sunday nights so we wouldn’t be able to run out and spend it. Pretty smart!
For my part, I got an allowance and saved most of it every week, but one day I decided I “needed” more money, so I wrote and designed a three-panel brochure on the computer about why I deserved it and showed it to my parents. I was only asked for, maybe, an extra $.50/week, so they agreed (also because I’d taken the time to write about it). Thus began a career in copywriting!
The thing I realized is that for now, time is on our side. Right now I think the main thing is just to talk about money and get them familiar with the concept as it comes up, without overdoing it. We went to Target yesterday and my son brought his money, and bought the first thing he fell for. He was way more concerned about the toy than how it was paid for. In fact when his preschool teacher asked him who paid for it, he hesitated and then said, “Mommy did.” The fact that he’d handed over the money to the clerk himself somehow didn’t stick in his brain!
Susan, I love your stories about your brother and about your brochure! Impressive.
I have read so much about chores and allowance and here is what we found to work in our house…
Kids each get $1.00 allowance each week and are thrilled with the amount so we will be keeping it at that price for as long as we can! We have Sunday morning family meetings and that is when we give them their allowance and they choose what their chores will be for the week. Allowance in NOT tied to chores. I read that you have to decide what you want them to get out of an allowance, learning that working = money or how to understand and use money wisely. We choose the second option. They each have a jar they keep their spending money in. We do still fork out a few items for them here and there.. crafts, books etc, but when they see an item in target that they HAVE to have, we say “you can buy it but it’s coming out of your money not ours”. They really do think about their choices now and will ask “how much money do I have?”, you can see the wheels turning and some days they make the purchase and other times they pass!
@Ann: This is such an awesome comment, and is exactly what I want to do! Thanks, lady!