Monday, January 18, 2010

This and That

I don't really have one cohestive blog post right now but I do have several things running through my twisted lil brain so I figured I'd just toss em all together! First, true to our New Year's vow to improve ourselves including spiritually and socially we've been visiting a new UU church for the past few Sundays. It's a nice place, friendly people, and I'd really been looking forward to their Morals and Ethics discussion group. We made it to yesterday's but I have to admit I was a bit stunned at the direction the chat went. We were presented with a story of an 80 yr old woman and man, both widowed with children, who got married then after one year the man needed to be admitted to a nursing home. The woman went into the marriage with a good bit of money while the man had none. Medicaid would only pay for his expenses if they had used up all their own money first so the question was should they get divorced. The general opinion of the group was she should divorce him to protect her money! Wow. That bothers me.

Training is going so nicely with the horses and dogs!!

Since Son #3 is still grounded he doesn't have a whole heck of a lot to do except sit in his room and read. On the one hand he's got a book that he's enjoying (it's about a dragon which he's just mad about!!!) and getting some great reading practice in. On the other hand he's feeling a bit shut away from the rest of the family which we don't want. Today I wanted to keep up his grounding, of course, but still get the poor kid out and with us some so since it was such a pretty day he came out to help us with outdoor work. Then he tells his dad that he needs more lunch money. His dad did a little calculating and said the kid should still have a good bit in his lunch account. So Son #3 comes clean. Along with buying lunch he's also been buying up a load of extras like ice creams, chocolate milks, and whatever other junk food they offer. This isn't the first time he's done this and we've told him that he's not allowed to do this! If he wants something extra every now and then that's fine but he needs to ask us for the bit of extra money that will cost before he buys it so that we can keep track of what we're spending where. What is with this kid and the lying, sneaking around kind of stuff???

And for the best surprise of my day today Lauren from
The Lauren Daily Experiment has gifted me with an award!!





That's a really cute one too. It reminds me to keep on learnin to make lemonade with those lemons! lol Thank you so much, Lauren! And now for the award rules:

*Put Lemonade Stand logo on your blog or within your post.
*Nominate 10 blogs you really enjoy
*Link the nominees within your post
*Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog
*Link to the person from whom you received this award

Which I'm off to do right now so adios, amigos!! Vaya con Dios! Hasta la pasta and all that groovy jazz!

3 comments:

  1. Concerning Son#3 - why doesn't he get to spend his pocket money on the junk food he wants? (I assume he's getting pocket money to spend as he wishes.) This way, he'll have to think about it twice whether he wants to spend it on chocolate and stuff or rather save it for special occasions (books, computer games, trips, cinema, you name it). He could, of course, do extra work around the house if he needs extra money. (My parents' solution for this kind of stuff: "Here's your money, you won't get anything else until next month, so be careful." After a few months, it worked out just fine. Of course, your son would have to starve if he spends his lunch money faster than the month goes round, or he would have to lie some more to get extra money... - well, maybe it was not the best possible way to teach children financial responsibility. But I still thinks it worked out fine.)

    (Not taking into consideration the question whether he should be allowed to eat as much junk food as he wants - once the kids reach a certain age, there's nothing you can do about that anyway.)

    Maybe he is lying because it's that much easier for him. Are there ways to make things easier so he does not have to lie anymore?

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  2. Diandra: He's free to spend his own money on extras if he wants to but he never saves his pocket change for things like that. He spends it as soon as he gets it like it'll do him some harm if he's in contact with it for too long! lol And we've tried giving them extra chores for extra money before but when that didn't work out we kinda gave up on the idea.

    As for "ways to make things easier"...it's got me thinkin. I don't know how we could but I do believe you're right. In any kind of training (and that's basically what raising a child is!) it can work to make the right thing easier to do and the wrong thing harder. I do think that we've shown him that when he makes a mistake yeah, we're going to correct him on it but it won't be NEAR as bad if he just tells us. When he lies to us we go out of our way to make the correction a good deal worse on him. Hmm... I'm not seeing how right now but I'll absolutely give it some thought! Thanks :)

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  3. Ha, know that! "Help, the money is burning holes in my pockets! Have to get rid of it! Aaaah!"

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