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Floresco Images / AP file
When shopping with -- and for -- your kids, find ways to let them make their own decisions about what to buy, and also teach them how to live with the consequences of those decisions.
No matter where you are, it seems like there is something for your child to want. At the mall, it’s a video game or 50-cent rides that last 45 seconds; at the zoo, an adorable stuffed animal; at the supermarket checkout, a pack of glitter pens; at the museum gift shop (which you have to walk through to exit the building), a cool puzzle.
If your child is constantly asking, “Can I have that?” and you’re not sure when to say yes and when to say no, we have a solution: letting kids make their own decisions and living with the consequences.
1. Provide for needs, but not wants
According to Ron Lieber, the New York Times “Your Money” columnist who is currently working on a book titled “The Opposite of Spoiled,” one approach, starting around kindergarten, is to buy your kids presents only at holidays and birthdays, and have children pay for everything else.
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“The family needs to have a very specific and ongoing conversation about the difference between needs and wants,” Lieber said, acknowledging that many things exist on a continuum. For example, many parents feel that books (within reason) are a need, not a want. Similarly, kids need a certain amount of clothing each season.
“Every family has to draw the line from when you cross over from 'want' to 'need.' These discussions become not just educational but wildly entertaining,” Lieber added.
2. Use allowance as a teaching tool
Once you establish this strategy as a framework, allowance can become your tool to empower kids to make their own decisions. How much to give will be based on your child’s age, your household’s financial situation and your family’s definition of needs and wants.
Lieber and his wife give their 6-year-old $3 each week, $1 of which is designated for charity, $1 of which goes into a savings jar and can’t be spent right away, and the third dollar can then be spent any way the child chooses.
Now comes the tricky part: staying out of it if your child wants to use his or her money for something you think is frivolous. “It’s OK to ask in the moment, ‘Is this a purchase you really want to make?’ but you have to hold your tongue and let them accumulate small piles of junk if that is important to them,” said Lieber. “We are dealing with (younger kids) who don’t have that much impulse control.”
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Kids won’t become fully formed financial beings within weeks or months, but by giving them the power to make their own decisions and experiment with that power, they will become more financially savvy. “There is nothing like real dollars in the real world to teach real lessons,” Lieber said.
3. Decide if you have a spender or a saver
Observe your child: Is she or he a natural saver who is great at self-regulating? If so, you’ll want to ask the kid questions about what she or he is saving for. This way you can be sure you’re comfortable with what the child wants to buy, and you can also use the conversation to teach simple research and math: Talk about how much the item costs and whether you might be able to find it cheaper someplace else. Then check in every so often to see whether they’ve re-evaluated, Lieber suggested. “One of the beauties of having them save and wait is that the intense desire for this or that almost always ebbs over time, only to be replaced by something new.”
If you have children who like to spend, adjust your response. You shouldn’t nag, but Lieber suggests going through their rooms and doing a cleanup together every six months or so. You can ask, “You spent $2 on this toy at the museum, and now we’re getting rid of it. Did you get your $2 out of it?”
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The beauty of this system is that it gives you an easy out during those toy-aisle meltdowns. If they’re begging for something they haven’t saved enough to buy, the answer is simply no. “If they’ve reached a goal, let them see it through and buy the object of their desire,” Lieber said. On the off chance you were going to get them the same thing for Hanukkah or Christmas, just get them something else instead.
If you have younger children who are too little to understand allowances or saving, at least refrain from buying anything simply because they’re whining and crying. Otherwise, you’ll teach them that acting badly gets them a reward. Instead, be comfortable saying no, and dealing with the occasional tears or tantrums.
4. Make a game of buying
If your family isn’t ready to out-and-out stop buying what your kids want, there are other ways to create more thoughtfulness around buying.
When Lieber’s daughter was young and they brought her to Disney World, her parents let her buy one item of her choosing. That turned the trip into “an exercise of weighing alternatives and budgets and delaying gratification, and not grabbing the first shiny object that was appealing.”
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Don’t forget your own behavior, because your kids are watching you closely. Every so often, it might not hurt for you to say something to your child, like, “I would love to have that dress in the window, but we are going to save that money because we’d like to go on vacation this summer.” The message will sink in eventually.
5. Neutralize peer pressure
If your child is upset that another kid has something and he doesn’t, try to remind him of the things he gets to do that other kids can’t. For example, maybe he’s on the travel soccer team that goes on fun day trips; Mom or Dad works someplace cool and he gets to visit; your family is taking a special trip over the break; or a parent or grandparent has a special skill and built him something special to play with.
The goal here is to remind your child that everyone gets to be first at something.
This story originally appeared on LearnVest.
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Leave a Comment:
Hmmm. I have no comment here because that was never an issue when I was a kid. It just didn't happen. Sort of the answer I got from my father when I asked and hoped he could help me with financing my first car. "Want a car, save your money."
Very True Dick. And My First Car, which I worked Hard for in a car repair/TuneUp garage between MATH and BIOLOGY CLASSES which were CHALLENGING And REWARDING, was a 1956 Ford CrownVictoria Convertible. O'Magosh did that car get me More Dates and PU$$Y, It was a great time. Gee, now kids are brainwashed through DumbedDown education to CONSUME for SelfEntitlement, which is why so many young voters went for the republicanCrimeCartelAristocratPropaganda. So while Young people in Hamburg are taught the sciences and Engineering to create World Class Goods and Taught GUARANTEED Trades to keep Germany running like a well oiled BattleShip, Kids here are TAUGHT HOW TO GET AND CONSUME GOODS With NO Government training programs like there. We Can and Will Change that....VIVA America and her necessary changes.
"The goal here is to remind your child that everyone gets to be first at something."
Um, no, every child does not get to be first at something. Most children in the country (let alone the world) don't get to be first at anything. Talk about setting up unrealistic expectations! And allowance, too - - why instill the expectation that they will consistently be given money for absolutely no reason on a regular basis? That doesn't happen in the real world either. No wonder adulthood is such a rude awakening for so many! Welcome to what life is really like.
I don't know about most kids, but I got allowance for doing chores. If my room wasn't clean (or whatever), no allowance. You don't get it for doing nothing. Some people might say that chores should be done without expecting a reward. That's true, also. You just have to decide- Do I want to teach my kids that chores should be done no matter what, or do I want to teach my kid good money management skills? Neither answer is wrong. It's just different parenting techniques. I got an allowance and I'm very good at saving my money. My husband didn't get an allowance. He's neater than I am, but wants to buy everything he sees. It's a trade-off.
Throw away all your TVs and don't take your kids into stores. The way monkeys are caught is to put a shiny object in a bottle that the monkey's fist cannot pass through.
Commercial driven TV shows form a child's thinking far more than some game of allowance can counter.
Problem is that most parents have no more fiscal discipline than their 3 year old.
Yeah, that's a realistic solution. Really?
Yes. It is a totally realistic solution! It worked for my family.
Not owning a TV is the best thing we've ever done !! We don't miss it. If we want to watch something, we have some dvds, or we rent or netflix or web it, but not very often. My kids don't watch shows every day, more like once or twice a week. I avoid the cold cereal aisle like the plague, I avoid the toy aisles at the stores unless there's a birthday or christmas coming, and I NEVER go to walmart under any circumstances!!
And that approach has given me the sweetest five year old anyone could ask for, and a one year old showing promise of turning out just as well! I love my great kids!
My sister and I learned very early on what a budget was and how it functioned in our family. We had no allowance and nothing was purchased on credit. Every "want" that was interesting to us was carefully thought out. We had respect for our parents and for how hard they worked for us. They never went into debt. Consequently, they produced two very fiscally responsible adults. I'm sorry that many of my friends with whom I went to grammar and high school have no retirement savings at all and will have to work basically until they cannot anymore.
Once every week or two, I take my kids (2 and 6 yrs old) to the dollar store, and they get to pick one item out. Even my two year old now understands a little about spending limits, if not about money itself. He knows if he's already picked out an item and sees something else he wants more, the original item gets put back on the shelf. The six year old is about to get started on a chore/allowance system, and got his first real dose of managing money with cash received as birthday gifts.
Maybe this should be titled, "How to control parents' impulse buying for their kids." Unless the little ones now have their own credit card, bank accounts or tiny purses and wallets stuffed with cash. Sigh.....and I'm sure there are those who do.
Lead by example is the best way. Can't go around living paycheck to paycheck while running everything on creditcards and expect their kids to save money.
I totally concur with this article - it has worked for me.
When the kids were young enough to go grocery shopping with me, they used to ask for all kinds of snacks and treats. I put a stop to it by saying they could request one thing, and one thing only, and of course, it had to be reasonably healthy. This made them think real hard about what they wanted, because if they asked for something too sugary and obnoxious, the answer would be no, and then they were out. They could not even ask for anything else! They had to be careful to ask for something I would approve of and get a yes. This is what I called "Avoiding the Begfest."
I also started giving them a monthly clothing budget since they were in middle school.
It's almost a miraculous transformation to see how differently your children thinks about buying stuff when the money is coming from the parent vs when it's coming out of their own pocket. Even if you give them $20 to buy what they want/need, instead of buying it for them, they suddenly see it differently. They think about what they're spending. Suddenly it may not be as important to get what they thought they wanted, because the idea of having change back from that $20 to save or spend on something else is highly thought-provoking.
When my kids were old enough (Jr. High), I came up with the rule that I would not pay for anything that required a monthly note. Cell phones were not on my list of "needs". When they were old enough I bought them a used car, but told them the gas and insurance was not mine to pay. They had to produce the money to keep the car on the road themselves, which they did with meaningful employment.
My kids learned to work for what they wanted because I did not feel that they were entitled to it just because they were alive. Kids these days have had everything handed to them just because parents feel it is easier than dealing with the tantrums. A little self-discipline on my part led to a healthy financial relationship for my children.
What's wrong with just saying NO? The word NO has averted or solved a multitude of problems for my children. Toys don't solve problems, self-control does. Best thing to do, set a good example for your children by keeping your own spending in check.
My now 5 year old son has never had a problem with putting something back on the shelf when I say, "That's cool buddy, now put it back." He's always just calmly put it back and moved happily on with life. Maybe I'm just lucky, but he's never ever thrown a tantrum in a store, although he has shush-ed other children who were... (ok, he did have one two-second tiredness-induced meltdown at our car door that one time when he was 3...) My trick? I meet his needs and parent him instead of throwing a new toy at him to solve all his problems. His baby brother is turning out pretty calm as well.
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we don't own a TV. There's nothing more annoying or brainwashing than advertising for worthless toys and junk aimed at children. No TV, no whining, no begging, and less noise! We don't browse the toy aisles only a couple times a year really. Toys are an occasional treat, like at birthdays and holidays, not a weekly band-aid to make them feel good about life. Sure helps to keep our house clean as well because we don't have a pile load of junk around!
Added bonus of the NO approach: children learn to be happy with what they have, even if it's a stick and a pile of leaves outside, lids from the cooking pots, or anything really...