Recently, my oldest daughter approached the subject of an 'allowance' with me.  My dear 7 year old wanted to know that if she did her 'chores', could she get money for doing all 2 of them.  I explained to her that we are a family and it is my belief that everyone needs to do their part without getting paid for it (after all, who would be paying me for doing the limitless loads of laundry, dishes and grocery shopping???)  She was a little disappointed, but I think she understood my point.  

But, call it the 'softy' in me, or perhaps the sucker, I gave in.... but only slightly.  I decided instead of paying my daughter for helping do her part in our household, I would give her a small amount of money (only a buck or two) at various times throughout the month to 'save'.  "Save?!" she scoffed.  "Yes, SAVE" I said, "Let's see if you can do it!"

The first set of 2 dollar bills got 'lost'.  The second dollar was mysteriously hidden by the cat and the third pair of quarters 'somehow' got misplaced.  Oh dear, my life lesson was NOT going so well.  I HAD to up the ante a little.... so off to the craft store we went.

I bought each of my girls a small $1 craft to work on... and my lovely little 7 year old spotted a collectible eraser. I don't know what it is... they are like gold to her. Probably more valuable than any dollar bill or stack of quarters I could ever give her.  "MOMMY!!! I have GOT to have that eraser!"  she squealed.

"Did you bring YOUR money?" I asked.  Huh?  The concept that SHE had money seemed quiet puzzling to her. Up until this point, money was a commodity that grew on trees and floated into her mom's purse whenever we were shopping, without rhyme or reason... "I forgot it!" she said.

The modern day tragedy of the moment then went something like this:

Me: "Well, then next time when we come back to the store, remember it and then you can chose the eraser you want and buy it with YOUR money."

7: "Ok, can we come back today?"

Me: "No"

7: "WHY?!?!"

Me: "Because we have other things to do today and we don't have time... whenever we go shopping now, you should make a habit of bringing your money with you... you never know what you might see that you'd like to buy... OR... you can hang on to your money and SAVE it, the more money you save, the bigger item you can buy in the end. You can buy a dollar eraser today OR save your money and then get something WAY bigger than an eraser with all of the money saved together. Capiche?"

7: "Yeah, ok"

The look of disappointment on her face killed me. I HATE seeing my kids disappointed, but I also do not want to raise kids without morals or good judgement just because I wanted to avoid frowny faces as they are growing up... so I offered a compromise.  I told 7 if she wanted to get the eraser THAT badly, she could forego the craft project in place of the eraser.  She beamed with happiness and all was right with the world once again.

When we got home, my 3 year old and I sat at the kitchen table working on her painting project.  All of the sudden, I heard a bunch of noise coming from 7's room.  "What on earth are you doing?!" I yelled to her from down the hall.

"I'm looking for MY MONEY!" she yelled back.

"HA!" Mission accomplished, I thought to myself!!.  A keen sense of self satisfaction ran over me.... until I heard 7's next comment:

"I'm going to save my money and BUY A HORSE!"   ((Sigh!))