Mother of the Year

I may or may not have the words Big Fat Failure emblazoned on my forehead. I’m afraid to check. In the interest of giving myself a little credit, I have to acknowledge that like a lot of my failures, I did start out with good intentions.

Two years ago at tithing settlement when our kids had zero tithing to pay, our bishop recommended we give them some sort of opportunity to pay tithing. We thought that was an excellent suggestion and we decided to give the older two an allowance and start giving Mark one when he turned 8. I had flirted with the idea of an allowance for years thinking it could be a great way to teach kids to handle money. The time had come. We were going to start.

We paid them the first month then promptly forgot about it. When tithing settlement time rolled around we had the abrupt wake up call that we’d forgotten the allowance and Braeden and Emma came calling and we had to cough up the money (at the inopportune time of just buying Christmas gifts). They paid their tithing then they wanted to spend the money. Yesterday.

I vowed to do better the next year. Adam said we’d match the money they decided to save. We’d teach them to manage money. We’d be real successes.

No. We weren’t. It would really help if someone sent me a reminder email to pay up every month like Puget Sound Energy does or maybe if I was smart enough to use the technology on hand and send myself a reminder email. But alas…

This morning Braeden told me he wanted to go to Target. That should have been a red flag that this wasn’t going to end well. Braeden loathes being dragged on errands almost as much as I loathe dragging him on errands. He’s always hungry and bored or more often, both. But he wanted to go to Target. He said he wanted a new toy and was going to use his allowance to get it.

That’s not how it was supposed to work.

I reminded him about tithing and savings and he said, “I’ll pay my tithing. But I want a new toy. And it’s MY money.”

Because I’m such a floundering failure with this whole allowance thing, I wasn’t able to come up with any answer to that. And we went to Target.

Braeden and Emma wanted to go directly to the toy aisles and stay there while I did my other shopping. I told them they could, but only if they took Mark. I sauntered through the store, thankful when I heard a dad and his son arguing over a backpack (that was “only $10” according to the dad but “ugly and I won’t use it” according to the son) that I didn’t have any similar retail related arguments on deck with my children.

Then I found my children. Braeden and Emma had each made a selection and insisted they wanted to use their allowance money which YOU OWE US MOM! Mark also had made a selection. Several of them. His arms were full. I put back all of Mark’s choices and tried to explain that he didn’t get a toy because he didn’t have an allowance. I knew I was on shaky ground.

And you try looking at my bonny brown eyed son with red curls and telling him that his siblings can have a toy and he can’t. So he got a bionicle…and a blue light saber because on our last trip to Nevada we left a treasured blue light saber behind. We have more light sabers than people in our household and we recently had to make an IKEA trip to buy a new system for bionicle storage but what can you do? Braeden shook his head sadly and with a sing song tone of perfect disgust said, “You’re spoil-ing him.”

My saving grace? Remembering another failing. When Mark lost his first tooth, the tooth fairy left him a dollar. It sat on a shelf and Mark had such little interest in it that I finally pocketed it. Mark lost another tooth and didn’t even put it under his pillow. He could care less about the money.

So here’s what I think: indulging my son with toys just because he wants them cancels out taking his money from the tooth fairy? Maybe?

I would teach parenting classes and share all of this knowledge with the masses but I’m busy. Trying to figure out how I can salvage this allowance policy.