When Parental Money Lessons Backfire
As I’ve mentioned before, we give our children a small allowance each week. Our daughter, who is only two, puts all of her money into a single-slot piggy bank and is allowed to fully spend it as she chooses. Our son gets more money for his allowance (for now), but has a Money Savvy Pig, where he splits his allowance into four equal parts: money to freely spend, money to save for an item he wants, money for an annual charitable gift, and money for investing for the long term.
The idea here, though, is that each of them has a few quarters to spend each week on whatever they would like. Most of the time, they spend it on reasonable kid things – they both have a strong affection for M&Ms, for example, and often buy M&Ms with their quarters.
This week, however, was different. We were dining at a restaurant that had one of those carnival-esque “claw” machines near the exit, where you use a stick to maneuver a claw around, then hit a button to have the claw drop into a pit of stuffed animals or other toys. Almost always, the claw is unable to pick any of the items up, so you simply lose the money you put in there.
We’ve warned our kids about these machines in the past. “If you put your money in there, you’ll just lose it and not get anything for it.” “Those machines are rip-offs.”
However, we are also committed to letting our children make their own choices about their free-spending money. Thus, as we were leaving with our children, they asked if they could use their spending money in the claw machine. After a quick warning about the nature of the machine, we allowed them to, assuming it would teach them a quick, simple lesson about disappointment and how things like this actually work.
Of course, my two year old daughter won a stuffed animal on her first try.
Of course, my four year old son won a stuffed animal on his second try.
Obviously, the lesson learned from this situation is the opposite of what we hoped they would take from it. My son, in fact, ...
