Parenting, rewards, and consumerism...

[Beatsong]

I would share your concerns. It does seem very young for an allowance, and for the whole looking ahead towards owning fantastic things, to me.

When they are older I think it's valid to encourage them to save towards things they really want, but little kids like yours need to enjoy that wonderful freedom that comes from the fact that they don't actually want that much, apart from the love of their mum and dad.

We don't have a TV, our kids are smart and we spend our time talking to them and doing stuff with them. As a result they are the most un-materialistic children in the world; they really could give a shit. Bought son (12) a mobile recently for purely practical reasons and he barely even bothers to take it with him much of the time, much less care that it's a shitty old-style one.

I even have a problem when Mrs Beatsong insists on getting them to write christmas lists. They have to think really hard to come up with things that they "want", and I figure if they have to think that hard they can't really want them that much. Surely we'd then be better off just letting them be happy like that rather than telling them: "go on, keep trying... you must really want something, don't you?!"

[pErvinalia]

That's how my kids should have been.