plenty and contentment (was controlled kids, mean parents)
[email protected]
In a message dated 2/12/04 7:24:23 AM, kbcdlovejo@... writes:
<< Sandra was obviously deprived, and often. I could have
*anything* my little heart desired.
<<I STILL hate window shopping. Always have. Always will. When I have money
though, I'm a *happy* shopper! <g> >>
OBVIOUSLY deprived?
I'm seeming needy to you? Really? Kelly, why would you SAY that? Tell me!
(NOT REALLY. <g> Just acting needy or something.)
When I go shopping with my charge cards in my pocket, sometimes I come home
having bought not a single thing, but I'm still happy, because I came home
emptyhanded out of pure and real choice. If I come home with the vision of
something I can't have, it's not as clean as emptyhanded, I come home needy, and
lacking.
Life doesn't only go from 0 into the postive numbers. There are negative
numbers, too.
Different people scale their lives differently. My kids are not needy kids.
Here's a little bit from a longer article which is here:
http://sandradodd.com/spoiled
-=-Holly, who just turned nine, gets an allowance of 75 cents per year of
age, so she was, up to last week, getting $6 a week. Now $6.75.
-=-We took her to Disneyland. She had saved all her birthday gift money
(which amounted to about $35 from her grandmothers and her brother), and her
allowance for several weeks, and she had loaned me $20 a few months before and said
"Keep it for Disneyland." She had $104, some in cash and some in "the bank of
dad."
-=-She came back from three days at Disneyland with $84 and a cute safari
hat.
-=-Nobody discouraged her from spending her money. She just doesn't NEED
anything, because she gets lots of things when she wants them, and so she doesn't
have that desperation to acquire.-=-
Nowadays Holly's allowance is $9 a month; she's twelve. Yesterday she had me
take her to buy batteries for two toys she has. One was something she picked
up at a kind of hobbit gift exchange, and it's an antique <bwg 15 or 20 year
old?> electronic recording card (about the size of a pocket calculator) that
took three watch batteries, but she really wanted to see what it would do. It
records one minute of voice. She has played with it a lot, but it took $12
worth of batteries. The batteries for her pocket spelling dictionary and
hangman game were another $4. Two weeks' allowance for batteries, and she didn't
complain a bit.
I'm not saying it's bad or good to window shop. I'm saying I don't
personally like it. I don't even know if my kids like it or not. When they go out
with friends, conversation is usually the main thing they report when they get
back.
Because Kelly who wasn't poor doesn't like it, and I (poor me) who was poor
doesn't either, it's possible that anyone's children might not think it's fun
either, for whatever personal reasons those might be.
But it does seem to me that it has to do with freedom and choice. Choosing
not to buy is in a different emotional category from the inability to buy.
Sandra
<< Sandra was obviously deprived, and often. I could have
*anything* my little heart desired.
<<I STILL hate window shopping. Always have. Always will. When I have money
though, I'm a *happy* shopper! <g> >>
OBVIOUSLY deprived?
I'm seeming needy to you? Really? Kelly, why would you SAY that? Tell me!
(NOT REALLY. <g> Just acting needy or something.)
When I go shopping with my charge cards in my pocket, sometimes I come home
having bought not a single thing, but I'm still happy, because I came home
emptyhanded out of pure and real choice. If I come home with the vision of
something I can't have, it's not as clean as emptyhanded, I come home needy, and
lacking.
Life doesn't only go from 0 into the postive numbers. There are negative
numbers, too.
Different people scale their lives differently. My kids are not needy kids.
Here's a little bit from a longer article which is here:
http://sandradodd.com/spoiled
-=-Holly, who just turned nine, gets an allowance of 75 cents per year of
age, so she was, up to last week, getting $6 a week. Now $6.75.
-=-We took her to Disneyland. She had saved all her birthday gift money
(which amounted to about $35 from her grandmothers and her brother), and her
allowance for several weeks, and she had loaned me $20 a few months before and said
"Keep it for Disneyland." She had $104, some in cash and some in "the bank of
dad."
-=-She came back from three days at Disneyland with $84 and a cute safari
hat.
-=-Nobody discouraged her from spending her money. She just doesn't NEED
anything, because she gets lots of things when she wants them, and so she doesn't
have that desperation to acquire.-=-
Nowadays Holly's allowance is $9 a month; she's twelve. Yesterday she had me
take her to buy batteries for two toys she has. One was something she picked
up at a kind of hobbit gift exchange, and it's an antique <bwg 15 or 20 year
old?> electronic recording card (about the size of a pocket calculator) that
took three watch batteries, but she really wanted to see what it would do. It
records one minute of voice. She has played with it a lot, but it took $12
worth of batteries. The batteries for her pocket spelling dictionary and
hangman game were another $4. Two weeks' allowance for batteries, and she didn't
complain a bit.
I'm not saying it's bad or good to window shop. I'm saying I don't
personally like it. I don't even know if my kids like it or not. When they go out
with friends, conversation is usually the main thing they report when they get
back.
Because Kelly who wasn't poor doesn't like it, and I (poor me) who was poor
doesn't either, it's possible that anyone's children might not think it's fun
either, for whatever personal reasons those might be.
But it does seem to me that it has to do with freedom and choice. Choosing
not to buy is in a different emotional category from the inability to buy.
Sandra