Making allowances

The experts say that giving your children an allowance helps instill in them a sense of the value of money. It encourages them to establish spending priorities, set goals and save up for what they really want.

With this in mind, I dutifully offered my children a dollar a week when they were young and then waited for the miracle of fiscal responsibility to take root in their brains.

It would have been a more effective training tool if I'd actually paid them. What would happen is I'd forget to get cash prior to payday (Saturday) and then offer to take them shopping at Goodwill instead. At the store, the kids' purchases would eerily reflect their frustration with the paymaster. Nick would pick out a toy that transformed into a weapon of mass destruction, Sam would get something sad-eyed and fuzzy, and Alice would fall in love with a bridesmaid's dress which cost twenty times what I owed her.

Eventually, the kids got tired of shopping at thrift stores. Alice went to work at the bed and breakfast down the street and the boys got a paper route. Once my children got a taste of regular paychecks, allowance went by the wayside. Now it's interesting to see how their experiences with the world of money has shaped them.

Alice is frugal, works hard and budgets for expenses. I think this is a natural reaction to being raised by a spendthrift who prefers reading "best of craigslist" to actual work and who balances her checking account by intuition. However, a bad example is still an example, so this counts as good parenting.

My youngest son, Nick, is an opportunistic money manager. There are things he'd like to have but, if at all possible, he'd rather have someone else pay for them. And though he's willing to wait for what he wants, his patience has its limits.

"Mom, when's my birthday?"

"In 364 more days, Nick."

"Oh. When's Christmas?"

Sam doesn't care enough about money, in my opinion, which explains why I frequently find dollar bills scattered in his dresser drawers, balled up under his bed, or being used as bookmarks in his favorite novels. I have told him that this is not interest earning behavior but he only rolls his eyes at me and says that I'm not being properly philosophical towards money.

"You shouldn't think that there's not enough money, Mom. You should think of it as sufficient for your needs."

It's not that I don't get what he's saying, it's just that I don't understand how philosophy will persuade the universe to put money in his college fund.

When I was young, I didn't get an allowance. If I needed money to go somewhere, like a dance or a ball game, I'd ask my dad for it.

"Dad, can I have three dollars?"

"If I had three dollars, I wouldn't speak to you."

"Please?"

He'd reach into his pocket and I'd hold my breath, wondering what might come out of it. Sometimes there were a couple of singles in there, sometimes a twenty, sometimes nothing but a handful of loose change. With Dad's pockets, you never knew. I had a large number of siblings who might've cleaned him out already or he might have had to cover an overdraft on the checking account or there could have been a closing on a house the day before. It was feast or famine at our house, growing up.

Last week the subject of allowances came up again. I asked Sam whether any of his friends still got one. He looked embarrassed.

"Yeah, I think Kerrian does."

"So, what is it? Like, five bucks or something?"

"Heh, no. Actually, it's more like fifteen or twenty."

"What? A week? Are you kidding me?"

He shook his head and smiled and I thought it best to leave the subject alone for a while. My kids are very understanding as far as a dollar a week goes, but I hate to think what they'd be picking out at the Goodwill store if I owed them each twenty dollars come payday.

Rock and Load

It's Saturday morning and I'm listening to my son doing color commentary on the state of the refrigerator.

"This is disgusting. Yuck. Who put this in here?"

He marches out of the kitchen and thrusts a half empty can of green chilis toward me.

"Mom, are we saving this?"

I don't want to crush my child's newly found zeal for search and destroy style housekeeping, but I happen to know that my husband put this can of chilis in the fridge, doubtless planning to use it for some culinary masterpiece in the near future. If I tell my son to throw it away, my husband might be annoyed. I weigh my husband's probable future irritation with my son's overwhelming need to use the bulldozer approach to cleaning the refrigerator, i.e., everything not nailed down gets pushed into the nearest garbage can, resulting in an appliance that is sparkly clean, fresh smelling, and above all, emptier than when you started.

I recall feeling exactly this way a long time ago, just prior to our move from Grand Rapids to Ludington, except that it was a house I was emptying instead of a refrigerator. I'd been upstairs cleaning the attic and stumbled across a large sack in one corner. Inside the sack were rough pieces of alabaster, pink and white and gray-veined, ranging from a few as small as a baseball to some as big as a loaf of bread.

Maybe it had something to do with being hot and dusty from hours of clearing the detritus that had accumulated after twelve years of cohabitative bliss, maybe it was because I knew that I'd only scratched the surface of what still needed to be organized, maybe it was because I distinctly recalled having moved this same sack of rocks at least three times in the last seven years, but right then I knew I'd never hated anything as much as I hated those rocks.

It didn't matter anymore that I and my husband had driven six hours to collect these very stones, sacrificing an entire afternoon to climb around on quarry piles in the hot sun, determined to find the perfect raw material for sculpting candle holders, incense burners and miniature busts.

That day in the attic I had exactly 72 hours before I had to pile everything we owned into a 24-foot truck. The contents of that sack were no longer potential art projects, they were a bag of rocks that weighed about thirty pounds and they represented everything I hated about moving.

I hated having to organize and pack up our stuff in order to move it when it was only going to get unpacked and disorganized the moment we reached our destination. I hated making choices about what had to go or stay and I particularly hated making choices about someone else's belongings, which these rocks technically were. They weren't just my rocks. They were my husband's rocks, too.

That's why I decided to do what I did. After all, he was already at the new place, possibly working hard and not having to pack up the old house. I was resentful about the whole arrangement. Also I was getting help loading the U-Haul from my brother and already was having a hard time justifying the bajillion books that were coming with us. ("Don't they have books in Ludington?") How could I possibly explain a bag of rocks? ("Marie, did you know that this sack has rocks in it?" "Yes." "Don't they have rocks in Ludington?")

Decision made, I crashed the sack down three flights of stairs and dragged it to the curb for the garbage men to take away in the morning. If I didn't accomplish anything else that day it was fine, because the bag of rocks was gone and that was four square feet of misery I wouldn't have to cram on the truck.

The next day on the phone, my husband asked me if I'd remembered to pack a certain bag of rocks. Naturally I told him that I had no idea where they were. Thinking about it fifteen years later, I'm sure I'd throw them away and lie about it again, no problem.

Now my son stands in front of me with can in hand. He's transferred his irritation with me for giving him this particular chore to the refrigerator itself and his body is stiff with that air of righteousness that's so conducive to a good cleaning session. I know exactly how he feels.

"Go ahead and pitch it," I say. "I'll think of something to tell your dad."

Spuddies — Unlimited Fun in the Sack

There are only two “Spuddies” left on the porch -- the one that looks like a six-legged hedgehog and the one with four twigs sticking out of its head.

Spuddies are my sons’ answer to the question, “What do you do with a ten pound sack of potatoes, an unlimited amount of sticks and a few hours to kill on a camping trip?” In this case, they made ten little men (and one hedgehog) using Idahos, sticks, and, for one scary Spuddy, bits of glass for teeth. They brought all eleven of them home to show me and so I did what any proud mother would do. I posed them on the porch for a picture (see attached).

I like the Spuddies. I like them because they’re something that my offspring made with their own hands and I’m a hopeless fan of every hand knit potholder, ceramic dish and woven basket that my children bring me. I believe that this is due to a chemical reaction that happens to women after they have their first child and so it’s nothing for which I have to apologize or for which I need therapy. I accept that I will always gush over my kids’ handcrafted items, the same way that I accept that I will always only wear things with elastic waistbands.

I also like the Spuddies because they’re proof that my kids’ brains haven’t completely turned to cooked cereal after too much time in front of the computer. There they were, out in the woods with nothing to do, and they scrounged raw materials and built something. If they can make Spuddies it means that the synapses are still firing, their imaginations are still in working order, video games have not turned them into mindless drooling zombies. It’s nice to know that if my kids were stranded on an island somewhere, with no digital comforts, they’d still manage to find ways to keep themselves amused. It also means that they’d starve to death for the sake of playing with their food, but that’s another worry.

Spuddies are also concrete evidence that my children aren’t grown up yet. When you’re an adult and you see a sack of potatoes you think about food, or work, depending on whether you’re the eater of the food or the preparer of the food. Only a child with nothing on his mind except how to have as much fun as possible in the next couple hours could look at a sack of spuds and see potential action figures. If my kids were as mature as they’re always telling me they are, they would have been too embarrassed to make toys out of vegetables, much less bring the collection home to show their mother.

There are one or two drawbacks to your kids making their own toys. For one thing, they don’t come with manufacturer’s warnings attached, like “This Spuddy has glass shards for teeth. It is not safe at any age. Do not leave on the floor where your mother will step on it. Throw it away immediately.” The boys felt bad about my foot and promised not to experiment anymore with sharp edged models. Still, it was great lesson in applying direct pressure to stop the bleeding and I’m sure I can use their residual guilt for extra chores next week. If they show signs of slacking I can just start limping again.

I think that the Spuddies would make a terrific family camping game, except that of course, there already is Mr. Spud Head or similar on the market. We bought one years ago. It’s plastic and the parts are mostly gone. Myself, I prefer this organic version to the one that comes in a box. With Spuddies, the number of toys you can make is only limited by the number of potatoes in the sack and what you’ve got available to stick into them. And the best part is, when the kids get bored with them, you can pull out all their arms and legs and facial features and cook and eat them. The Spuddies, I mean.

I don’t think we’ll be dining on this batch of Spuddies, however. I suspect that the nine that are missing are somewhere behind the hedges that surround my porch. Probably I could find them if I looked hard enough, but it’s better to save those under-the-yews-and-in-amongst-the-creepy-crawlies searches for the spring, when all the eight legged critters are still sluggish from the cold. Besides, if they’re buried deep enough in the mulch, by this time next year I may be harvesting at least one bag of potatoes. If I’m lucky, my boys will still be young enough at heart to make Spuddies out of them.

Endless summer, endless chores

School’s out, summer’s here and that means it’s time to get out The Endless Chore Game.

Chores are not popular at my house. Nobody looks forward to them. Nobody appreciates the trouble I take to make sure that everyone has chores to do that will build character (“Why do I have to clean the bathroom again? I did it last week!” “Because you did a terrible job and you need more practice.”). Nobody thanks me for assigning chores that are a good fit for them (“You told me I did a great job on the bathroom this week so why do I have to do it again?” “You’re so good at it I’ve decided to make it your regular chore.”).

Chores are not easy to think of. By the second or third week of summer I’ve lost all my zeal for assigning things that actually need doing, like washing windows and weeding the garden, and I’ve settled for assigning things that can be done without direct supervision, like answering the phone or checking the mailbox.

Chores are not contagious. My children see me doing chores all the time, so how come they’re not patterning themselves after me? If you’re a reader your child will most likely be a reader, too. If you’re athletically inclined it’s a cinch at least one of your children will embrace sports. You’d think that watching me work like a dog would induce my children to sweat buckets in order to be just like me, but it hasn’t worked out that way.

A few years ago, desperate at being faced with another long summer arguing about chores, I invented The Endless Chore Game.

The Endless Chore Game has no winners or losers, just players. It’s called “Endless” because it has no start and no finish. Your game piece just goes around and around the path, until summer’s over and it’s time to put the game away.

Here’s how it works. I make a board with a circular path on it, divided into about 40 squares and I write a different chore on each square. These can be simple and boring, like scouring the kitchen sink or more complex and interesting, like making dessert for six people for less than $5.

The finished board looks like a Candyland game, only the images are more sinister. Instead of kids climbing ice cream mountains and playing under gumdrop rainbows, I draw pictures of kids mowing the lawn and washing dishes and sweeping floors. In the corner on the upper right is a shadowy adult figure, arms crossed, tapping her foot. I think it sets the mood.

I put the board on the refrigerator door and the kids use magnets for game pieces. Every day in the summer, they take turns rolling dice and moving their pieces to find out what chores they have. It’s not completely grim. The board has a few free spaces with fun stuff, like cloud watching or pudding construction or singing Old MacDonald Had a Farm on the porch in three part harmony.

This will be the third year of playing the Endless Chore Game in our family. Every summer I modify the rules a little bit. For instance, you’re not allowed to reverse direction anymore. This keeps certain resourceful players from moving back and forth between free spaces for the duration of the game, thereby getting almost no chores at all compared to everyone else. And I’m toying with the idea of assigning points to certain chores, so that if you land on the “Paint the Garage” square you don’t have to roll again for a week.

Some members of the family enjoy games so much they leap downstairs every morning and play the Endless Chore Game first thing. I think it’s the thrill of knowing you might get lucky and get no chores at all for the day. It feels like a mini-vacation almost. Some family members are less enthusiastic, suspecting that the Endless Chore Game is not really a game at all, but just a way for a certain parent to get out of having to face unpleasant realities, namely, being unpopular in the name of character building.

I love The Endless Chore Game. I even play it, although, technically, I do chores whether or not I roll the dice first. I don’t play because I lack a list of things that need to be done. There will always be chores in my life. I will always feel obligated to do them and to insist that my kids know how to do them. Chores are required. The Endless Chore Game just makes them more interesting. Well, all right, and there’s something else. The truth is, I’m still shooting for the “Sing Old MacDonald on the Porch” square, and I have a feeling this might be my lucky summer.