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Should they have to earn it?Nov 21 '00 Write an essay on this topic.Should children get allowances? At what age do you start? Should they have to "work" for this allowance? What chores are fair? Should children be paid for doing their "fair share" to keep the household intact? These are some of the things that you need to think about when you AND YOUR SO sit down to decide if your child should get an allowance. Yes, you and your SO. This should be a joint decision, first of all. It will just cause problems if it isn't. Something Dad may expect them to do without receiving allowance Mom might think is an extra chore and give the allowance, or extra, for. You need to discuss everything before hand. Adjustments may, and should, be made as you go, but always jointly. What age should you start? When does your child start begging for money for toys? I believe that this depends on the child. If you give them a quarter, do they want to spend it, save it, or put it in their mouth? If they are old enough to want to spend or save, them they are old enough. 4-ish, maybe older, would be about right. I believe that you should start fairly young. Let them learn young so that it will, hopefully, follow them thru life. What chores should be paid and what should be expected? This would depend on the household. In most households, the child has a set of chores that are expected. Cleaning their own room, for example. Picking up their toys. In our home, those are a given. You make the mess, you clean it up. No reward should be given for that. We have one child. If there is a mess, there is no question as to "who done it". What my mother did, if no one 'fessed up, we all got to clean it up. Fair? No, I guess not, but as she used to say, "at least this way I know that I got the right one". We were expected to clean our rooms. With three children in the house and working overtime, the least we could do was that much. Oh, yeah. We did more. Such as: DISHES My sister and I got this chore. I would wash, she would dry and put away. That is until one night my mom asked my brother to do them as my sister and I had dance class. My brother got it in his head to tell my mother that dishes were women's work. Well, let me just say that my sister and I never washed another dish. LAUNDRY Well, I got to wash and dry. My brother and sister got to fold and put away. Simple. With five people in the house, every day there was at least one "white" load of clothes and one "dark" load. Then you had sheets on weekends and such. When it was split up like that, it wasn't such a big deal. We dirtied that laundry up, too. Why shouldn't we help? Since I was six years older, and my mother valued her washer and dryer, it made since to give that job to me. TRASH DETAIL This was my brother's job, usually. It was his "kitchen" chore until that smart, or not so smart, comment about dishes being women's work. It just never got turned over to either one of us girls. He would just take it out after he did the dishes. PET DETAIL My parents started a kennel when I was 12. My brother and sister were 6. This was quite a job. We had two toy poodles inside, and three Siberian Huskies and two Alaskan Malamutes outside in kennels. Feeding became my job. It was until I moved out when I was 18. I didn't mind to much. By that time, my parents were no longer breeding them, they were and had always been, family pets. Cleaning the kennels was my brother's. My sister took care of the poodles. LAWN DETAIL This was my weekly job as for a long time, I was the only one old enough to be trusted with the mower. My mom was afraid that my brother would cut off his leg or something. He tend to be very accident-prone. He took the job over when I moved out, but my mom was still worried and wouldn't let him use it unless she or dad was home to run him to the hospital. This may all sound like a lot, but in a daily routine, it wasn't. I enjoyed spending time with the dogs, especially my 'Husky. Granted, it wasn't all fun, but it was part of being a family. We did receive allowance, based on our ages at the time, of course, and if we goofed off or didn't do our chores, we lost our allowance for the week. I was saving for new cassettes (scary, huh?) and my brother and sister had their own wants and "needs". Our parents bought our clothes and such, but I wanted that new fad pair of jeans or shoes, I had to pay for them myself. I think allowance is a good idea. Children should learn early how to work and save their money. I felt a certain amount of pride when I could say that I paid for something myself. I also tended to take care of it better if I bought it that if it had been just given to me. When I got old enough for a car, I paid insurance and up-keep on it. If I ragged it out, I footed the bill. Pure and simple.  |
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