Fostering money management in kids

Lord knows, I don't have all the answers to how to raise kids mostly because each kid is different and what works for one doesn't work for the other two children I have. 

What I have learned is that you have to pay attention and find the incentive that your kid needs. 

Some of this "paying attention to incentives" comes from subbing. I had one boy who didn't want to clean up his area. He had papers on the floor and food wrappers. I tried encouraging and reminding until someone said there was a spider in the room and this particular child freaked out. 

DING! DING! INCENTIVE FOUND.

I said, "You know, bugs really love messes. All those papers on the floor give them plenty of places to hide, and they love to eat the food residue that is on wrappers and on the food debris under your desk."

This kid cleaned up his area not because he wanted to please me (he did not care), but to avoid bugs. 

N and M are natural savers, while money in G's pockets burns figurative holes. 

I realized that I had to very deliberately talk about why he needs to save (because it causes me anxiety when he doesn't because it makes me worry he is going to grow up and live in my basement forever). 

I also had to put timelines on him until he can get better at putting timelines on himself and control his spending impulses. I have to incentivize saving because he doesn't have a natural tendency to want to do this. I'm hoping that after years and years and years he won't need me actually saying stuff to him but will have internalized it. 

He likes video games, so after he buys some, I don't let him buy for several months. However, if he is able to save up his money to a certain amount, he can then buy something. No saving=longer wait to buy another game. More saving=shorter wait. 

Since N now works a "real" part-time job, G and M are the primary neighborhood petsitters in their little business. They earn great money doing this. I have never given them an allowance, although this summer I am paying both boys for any chapter books they read ($5 per book).

G wants more money, and G isn't too interested in reading chapter books. I'm hoping payment for reading (which I've never done before) might be the incentive he needs. 

One of the issues D had with G saving up and spending his money was that he bought things that D thought were stupid. D said, "He doesn't even finish these games." 

My response was: "You buy a brand new iPhone every couple years and spend over $1,000 ON A PHONE which I think is stupid. You don't want someone telling you that you can or can't buy with money that is yours. Same applies to G."

The truth is I hate shopping so most everything that anyone buys I personally think is stupid.

But that's not the point.

The point is that the kids learn to save their money so they can buy without debt the stupid things they want. 

It is important that the kids know that mom and dad aren't going to buy them everything they want. If they want to drive, they pay the insurance and gas. If they want something beyond the basic food, shelter, clothing that we provide they can buy that stuff, too. We don't look at Christmas and birthdays as the time to get our children their heart's desires. 

My kids aren't perfect, but they have learned fairly well that no one can have everything they want the exact moment they want it. 

I try to remind them that when they see friends who have more than we have (and FFS, we have a lot), those kids have both moms and dads who work full-time. They are reminded that we don't know what those family's credit reports look like, how much retirement savings they have, how much overall debt they hold. We only see what they have; we don't know how they paid for it or if they paid for it or whether they'll be paying for it for a really long time. We don't know if the kids going to X,Y,Z college are in debt because of it. We don't know if these families pay outright for their cars or have loans they pay each month. My kids are reminded often that what they see is only half of the story (and that's generous). 

A delight (#11)

I took a very long pause on noticing delights; reality and the strange busyness of slowly going back to whatever passes for normal these days got in the way.

Today, though, was a bit delightful because N and I took a road trip that got me out of my house, out of my city, and also threw me all the way back to my teenage years.

We visited WKU which involved several (+)  hours in the car, some photos, a crap ton of walking, and lunch inside an actual restaurant since 1.) we are both fully vaccinated and 2.) it was 2 pm CST which means there were hardly any people inside. 

It was delightful to wander the campus which was beautiful with various pieces of public art on a day that I thought would rain but ended up being nice and breezy. 

It was delightful to feel like I was getting away (even though we came back the same day).

It was delightful (and maybe a little stressful) to talk to N about her ideas about what she wants and where she wants to go and what she might want to do with her life the next several years of her life. 

I was reminded of my own college visits and the decisions I made about where to go. Now me, 47-year-old me, happily medicated and well-versed in therapy me, would drop everything and go off to college away from my parents to explore and have fun. But the me of 30 years ago wouldn't and didn't. 

And N has to do what is right for her, the her she is now. Whatever that may be. 

We've still got one more college visit to do. 

The curmudgeon in me would normally hate to do this stuff but the travel-deprived-now-fully-vaccinated-me was ok with it. 

And that was a delight, too. 

Please don't mistake my bitching for ungratefulness

It has taken me many years to realize that a person can bitch about things in their lives and become aggravated with the people and/or situations in their lives while still also recognizing that they are beyond fortunate in all the ways that really matter.

I don't know if F. Scott Fitzgerald actually said it or if it is just obvious, but intelligence, and dare I say wisdom, is being able to hold two diametrically opposed ideas in your head at the same time and still function. I didn't need to watch Pixar's Inside Out to know that maturity in one's emotional life comes from being sad and happy at the exact same time. Or how you can hate your child and love your child in the same moment. 

Black and white have always been gray. 

I have long been a Debbie Downer, a complainer. I can find 10 trillion things I don't like in the world. And sometimes people, especially those who don't know me well, think this means I'm just a whiner. Like I'm oblivious to how good I have it. 

It occurred to me today after interviewing a woman near my age with leukemia that I talk to a lot of people who have been through it. 

I've interviewed people whose children have terminal illnesses. I've interviewed people who have dealt with some kind of trauma (former sex workers, drug addicts, etc.). I've interviewed people who have suffered debilitating medical conditions or who themselves have terminal conditions. I've been in neonatal units and talked with parents whose children are struggling to live (pre-COVID). 

And when what you do to make a living means listening to people tell these often devastating stories, it makes you fundamentally understand the "there but for the grace of God" thing. 

What I know though is that even these individuals don't savor every moment in the way that movies make it out or the way people think they might. 

Being grateful doesn't mean thinking every single thing is perfect and wonderful and good. We have a name for that condition and it's called batshit nuts.

I personally think being grateful is much deeper and more involved that simply glossing over everything as if it is wonderful. Gratefulness is about looking frustration and aggravation and suckiness and pettiness clear in the eye as you bitch about it. And that doesn't happen out loud; that is an internalized process. 

You can bitch and be grateful AT THE EXACT SAME TIME. 

I can think my 13-year-old is a phenomenal asshole (which he often is) while at the same time knowing that he is smart and funny and that I'm so fortunate his issues are minor compared to so many other children's issues. I can be thankful that we have the ability to get consistent treatment for his issues. 

But being grateful doesn't mean he is not a royal PITA and that I don't have feelings of frustration.

Being grateful doesn't mean I feel less or should feel less. 

It means having feelings and stating feelings while deep down knowing that even in the midst of relatively NBD suckiness, things are still pretty ok. 

Missing travel and Grumpy G

Our family will be going on a very low-key trip some two hours from our house this summer. It is all the logistics I can handle with only three of us fully COVID-vaccinated. 

As I was thinking about how much I really am looking forward to being away from home, it occurred to me how downright unpleasant many of our trips have been.

Not the entire trip, of course. 

But when you travel with kids, somebody is usually unhappy at least some of the time.

For us, our usually unhappy kid is the middle one. 

He is notorious for hating hiking (which D and I have always enjoyed). When I say hiking, I mean low-key hiking. We're not backpacking. We're not hiking tons of miles. 

Really, we just walk in the woods a little bit. 

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole to find as many photos as I could of G being grumpy on trips. One day these will be collected into a book for him. 

In this first pic, you would think we had drug the kids out all day at Disney. Nope. We have long been the kind of parents that religiously made our kids nap even when it interfered with whatever good time we were having. This was early in the day. G just wasn't having it. 

Here we were during a stop at a botanical garden on the way to somewhere. The evil-looking kid in the center is G. He seems unhappy. 

Mostly G is known for his "lying down in disgust" pose. 

He's done it in Michigan. 

And Kentucky. 

And Colorado.

And at Kennesaw National Battleground in Georgia. 

And those aren't the only such photos I have. 

I'm pretty sure we might get a new one on this summer's excursion.