06.14.08
Mom, It’s On Us Tonight
It seems like every day my husband and I are constantly drilling some sort of message about financial and social responsibility into our boys’ heads. It also seems like every day they just don’t get it. They fight, they forget to clean off the table, leave their dirty clothes on the floor, totally decimate a bathroom and ask us to buy them everything they see on TV.
Well tonight was a true test. We had torrential rain and my husband was not home. Our garage flooded all the way up to the door leading into our house. My 14 year old was down the street at a friend’s house and I was home alone with my 10 year old twins. I immediately called him and he came running home. Quickly and without panicking we worked as a team. My older son assumed the lead and heavy job of making multiple trips carrying the wet vac up the driveway to empty it. My younger boys lifted up the drains and grabbed some brooms and started pushing the water outside. In less than an hour the water was gone and the drains that were previously overflowing were clear.
After we cleaned up I told each of them how proud I was. We worked as a team and every one had different and equally good ideas on how to attack the situation. Even more importantly we all listened and respected each other’s ideas - no one fought for once! So what could have been a disastrous situation ended up being a little glitch in the day.
Later on I gave them a little test. Individually, I asked each of them how much money they felt they earned to clean up the garage. My older one immediately said, “nothing”. The twins both hesitated. One of them said, “$20 but it wouldn’t be right to ask for that so I would say $10 and then he said, well, actually nothing.” The other one said, “you owe us a lot but nah, nothing.”
So what’s the moral of the story? Drilling responsibility and kindness into your children is relentless and tiring work. And most times you don’t even get any instant gratification. But tonight we reaped the benefits of our persistent efforts and I must say not only were we proud of our children but we were also proud of ourselves.
Do you have any similar stories to share about your kids? I would love to hear them.
Stumble it!
Nataliya said,
June 17, 2008 at 3:49 pm
So sorry you had to deal with all that flooding. And you are very lucky to have such great helpers handy! I am not sure offering kids money for good deeds is a right thing to do, but I can be wrong since mine are 5 and 3 and I am just entering the path. But since your kids rejected the money anyway, I would say you are doing a great job raising them!
CreditMom said,
June 17, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Thanks for your comment Nataliya. I absolutely agree that offering them money to help out in a crisis does not send the right message. I did this only as a test to see how they would react and I’m glad they passed because if they hadn’t they certainly weren’t getting any money…they would have been getting a good talking to!
markie hall said,
June 20, 2008 at 7:18 pm
do you all work together?
CreditMom said,
June 29, 2008 at 12:04 am
Hi Markie,
Thanks for your comment. My audience consists of some fellow co-workers interested in sharing their experience as working moms raising financially responsible children as well as readers who have just sought me out online.
Thanks for reading.
Creditmom