Words of wisdom?

It's half term this week, so time spent with the Boos...passing the time, chewing the cud. I spent a good portion of the day trying to teach my daughter the value of money. This stems from her getting a £20 note for her birthday; the first time she has got her hands on genuine cash rather than pennies of pocket money. This £20 has literally been burning a hole in her 'Hello Kitty' purse since the day it arrived. It is simply too much for her to have it sitting there with all of it's endless possibilities of purchasing power. Toys, clothes, more toys...more clothes...

I tried to explain that £20 doesn't actually buy that much, maybe one toy, maybe one item of clothing with a bit of change. We talked about value and cost. I tried to explain the concept of retail profit (no, they don't give the money to charity) but lost her there. I was suggesting we opened a bank account and they looked after the money - heaven forbid they actually saved it for her. But that was just like having a large, nameless, faceless 'Hello Kitty' purse. She did not see the benefit.

I tried every tactic I knew to get her to see that just spending it on the first bit of plastic 'toot' she saw was meaningless and drew on many examples of previous purchasing decisions that had in fact been a let-down once she got them home.

I realised that after this talk on the merits of saving money, that I had done two things: i) made her feel sad and guilty about her money and ii) exhibited my own slightly warped attitudes to money to my unwitting nine year child! I hardly lead by example; she spies those hidden carrier bags in my wardrobe!

It was an example of those times when you try, as a parent, to distill things down for your kids in the hope that something will stick. Some gem of wisdom will make its way into their psyche and lodge there, ready for later use. I look back on nuggets that my Mum passed to me. Never wear grey washed-out underwear. Long legs are better than big boobs (I suspect here she was just trying to reduce my envy of my big bosomed friends). Don't waste time worrying about something that might never happen.

Really am I just passing on my own desire that my haphazard spending habits aren't passed to her by some sort of osmosis? My childhood was spent shuttling between divorced parents so there was alot of retail therapy to soothe the comings and goings. I always felt this set me up to associate shopping with happiness. Direct link. But Boo is not part of that particular family dynamic. So what will be her excuse? Who knows?!

All I know is I think it's time for me to Lighten Up (with a capital 'L', capital 'U') so we went to the Farmer's Market and bought some punnets of beautiful local strawberries...and that bit of spending made it all feel better... ;-)