Allowance
sandy lubert
<<My feeling is that enforcing savings is
like enforcing anything else - you are depriving the child of the
opportunity to find out the value of out on her own, and really take
it to
heart. But - the bottom line for me is ownership. I am giving my
child
money, and if I am truly giving it, then he truly owns it, and I
have no
business telling him what to do with it. The whole point of the
exercise is
to give him a sense of control, and that purpose is diminished, in my
opinion, if there are strings attached.>>
Kate, I really like this. We have kind of "done it all". At one
point, we gave our ds $3 allowance and told him to divide it: 1)save
2)spend and 3)give to someone who needs it more than you. We never
enforced it, though, and we've let it go. Our boys do get allowance
(it's once a month, on the first of the month) and they are so
generous with it. Buy each other things, etc.
Like Kate said, if we had insisted that they do this, it would lose
all meaning, right? (Think about demanding "thank you" etc.)
We still try to make a point of "showing" them when we support a
charity or someone in need, and we certainly tell them about things
like paying off loans -- when we got our pool recently, we explained
that there wouldn't be any "extra" money for a while, etc.
I'd say try to be as open and natural as possible - help them learn
as they live!
Sandy
like enforcing anything else - you are depriving the child of the
opportunity to find out the value of out on her own, and really take
it to
heart. But - the bottom line for me is ownership. I am giving my
child
money, and if I am truly giving it, then he truly owns it, and I
have no
business telling him what to do with it. The whole point of the
exercise is
to give him a sense of control, and that purpose is diminished, in my
opinion, if there are strings attached.>>
Kate, I really like this. We have kind of "done it all". At one
point, we gave our ds $3 allowance and told him to divide it: 1)save
2)spend and 3)give to someone who needs it more than you. We never
enforced it, though, and we've let it go. Our boys do get allowance
(it's once a month, on the first of the month) and they are so
generous with it. Buy each other things, etc.
Like Kate said, if we had insisted that they do this, it would lose
all meaning, right? (Think about demanding "thank you" etc.)
We still try to make a point of "showing" them when we support a
charity or someone in need, and we certainly tell them about things
like paying off loans -- when we got our pool recently, we explained
that there wouldn't be any "extra" money for a while, etc.
I'd say try to be as open and natural as possible - help them learn
as they live!
Sandy