Children and Pocket Money

Southland Times, Issue 22218, 10 January 1934, Page 3

Children and Pocket Money

The pocket-money problem cannot be treated lightly by parents who take any thought for the future happiness of their offspring. Money, in present day society, is too important for this. The man or woman who is vague about money—who has never learned to handle it and has wrong ideas of its value—is unfitted to cope with the difficulties of everyday life. This being so it is quite obvious that the sooner a child learns how to handle this necessary stuff—the better. If he learns about the honest acquisition and wise spending of money gradually, as a matter of course, he (and this means she, too, every time) is fax - less likely to get unbalanced and exaggerated ideas about either poverty ox- riches. Nor is it only the children of affluent parents who are cruelly handicapped by this lack of equipment fox- dealing with life as it is. Ordinary middle-class parents are just as guilty of spoiling their children in this respect. “Let’s give them as much as we possibly can,” they argue. “They will find out soon enough how difficult it is to make—and keep—money.” It is meant in all kindness, but it is a cruelly mistaken policy, which leads inevitably to disillusionment when the children find out that money does not just drop from the skies. No one wants to make a child mercenary ox- grasping, but some day he has got to learn that honest work is the only kind which deserves payment. Why not, as soon as the small person is capable of learning that pennies are things which you can exchange for other things, teach him or her that pennies will not always come from the inexhaustive pockets of parents, but must be earned by an agreed-upon and pro-perly-done job of work? Why not let the money, whatever- its total and the age of the child be payment for some piece of work upon which a definite price has been set and which has been done to the best of the child’s ability? With the very young you naturally begin gently. It may be that the small lady or gentleman is merely given a duster and a piece of furniture to deal with. But no comer or convolution is to be left undusted. There are dozens and dozens of things you can think of like this. Some regular job every week, so that the small person can count upon a small regular income, however- small.

Once these things are clearly understood all you have to do is to withhold payment if the work has been skimped or neglected, and produce it at once for a good job.