Not That Kind
I’m not the mom that you think I am if you think that post about Lena is the kind of mom I always am. If it were Liberty who had the trade remorse that Lena suffered through the other night, I would not have had the same compassion. Liberty is very susceptible to advertising and slick packaging. Her middle name is “impulse buy” (it’s a family name) and if she would have been in the same situation, I would have said, “That sucks. Go to bed,” because I would have felt like, yes, this is a lesson you needed to learn. Goodbye. By the same token, if Lena missed out on purchasing something because she waited and wondered and waited and wondered so long that it went out of stock, I would say, “That sucks. Go to bed,” because it might be helpful for her to learn that sometimes you just have to jump in and do it.
This is how money works with Liberty: She gets some and she spends it within 5 minutes. Usually she buys Another Effin’ W3bkinz. She always says she wants to save for 2 allowance days in order to get a DS game or something like that, but that would take “4 whole weeeeeeks!” So she, without fail, opts for spending over saving. Last allowance day, she decided she was going to spend some gift money and save her allowance money to pool it with Lena’s so they could buy a used Gamecube together. This was established before we went to the store to spend her gift money. While we were at the store, Liberty decided she didn’t want to pool the rest of her money with Lena. Instead, she wanted to spend every last penny buying several W3bkinz, which meant that Lena wouldn’t have had enough money on her own to get the Gamecube, which we were planning to get that night. We try to not be controlling when it comes to their very own money (as evidenced by the number of Effin’ W3bkinz in this house), but we felt that it was unfair of Liberty to renege on her deal with Lena and we told her so. She responded by very calmly paying for her solitary W3bkinz and then as soon as we walked out into the parking lot, she crumbled into a quivering mess of hysterics and screamed in a pitch that was so painful to hear that it could be used to question suspects at Guantanamo Bay, “IT’S NOT FAIR! YOU’RE MEAN! IT’S MY MONEY!” over and over with a red face and tears and flailing to boot. So I yelled back with my mean mommy tone, “I’ll tell you what’s not fair: promising to pool your money with your sister and then deciding not to and leaving her hanging. I’ll tell you what else isn’t fair: how about if Maya and Lena continue to get allowance money and you get NOTHING? How about that? That sounds fun to me! Yup, let’s do that. Now quit yer cryin’ and suck it up! You made a deal.”
Ahem.
They’re different kids, that’s all. I know it’s confusing, what with them being identical twins and all, but as much as I try to make them the same, it doesn’t work. My different reaction to them all comes down to my different fears for them. I don’t worry about Liberty over-analyzing everything to death and missing out on life. I worry about her leaping before she looks and getting seriously hurt in the process. Writing that, it seems like these girls just can’t win with me and that’s probably true. I am, after all, the mom. There’s just no pleasing the mom. I’m just looking for a bit of middle ground. I don’t constantly harangue Liberty about the fact that she will be bored with her W3bkinz within minutes of getting it home. It’s her money. That’s her lesson to learn and she’s not going to learn it with me rolling my eyes at her every time she buys something. I will step in, though, if her spending habits hurt another person.
Now I have to go because today is allowance day and Liberty is already at the other computer looking at “exclusive items” she can buy on the W3bkinz website. Commercials were made for kids like her.
June 27th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
I totally think it would be much easier to parent if all the kids could act and respond the same to everything, liked all the same foods, movies, books and clothing. Ah, DNA, my life would be so much easier if it wasn’t for you.
June 27th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
I discovered you very recently and I have to say that the subtitle to your blog is a big fat lie.
You have a LOT of wisdom.
June 28th, 2008 at 8:05 am
You should do the M&M experiment with her over and over and try to re-condition her-tell her she can have 10 m&ms now or if she waits she can have the bag if she waits and leave them out in a bowl and leave her alone with them to decide. See if she ever gets that good things come to those that wait. Or see if she just is satisfied with 10 m&m’s!
July 1st, 2008 at 8:37 am
At least you give your kids a regular allowance! I’m kind of hit and miss with the pay days. My kids are trying to form a union.
Many years ago I heard about some money plan for kids that involved having four banks - one for pocket money (for assorted small crap like treats at the movie theater, gumball machines), one for short-term savings (medium crap like Webkinz and Hello Kitty or Nintendo DS games), one for long-term savings (big not-necessarily crap like bikes and trampolines) and one for charity (not crap). The kids can decide how much of their money goes into each bank, but once it goes in, it stays there. Last summer we got as far as making the special money jars, but with the irregular paychecks around here, this project hasn’t exactly gotten off the ground.