Last article I mentioned that one of my favorite ways to spend barter is on my kids. I love the fact that I can give my kids just about anything that is on barter. I hate the fact that they know it. Entitlement. It’s a very ugly word. And it’s oh-so-easy for kids to feel entitled to whatever they want if you set the pattern.
Honestly I’m in uncharted territory here because historically my kids haven’t felt entitled to anything. I don’t even give them an allowance. They have their own small businesses and earn their own spending money. But when I talk to them about how an expensive summer camp was that we sent them to (see my last article), they are very causal about it. They say it was fun and that they guess they would like to go again in the future. They also talked about how long they had to wait around for lunch and that the pool was cold. Give me a break! When I was a kid, we did a Polar Bear Swim at camp where the whole point was that it was fun to freeze your butt off!
I haven’t decided quite how to handle this one yet but I’m pretty sure the correct solution has something to do with earning privileges rather than handing out the good-stuff to my kids simply because it’s on barter. Maybe I need to set them up in business earning the barter credits that they want to spend. That’s food for thought. More later.
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