Who's On First Banana Bread, Part IV: An eight-year-old with deep pockets

When I suggested back in May that my children go into business together as banana bread vendors at Carlisle’s all-inclusive Farmers Market, I wanted to see if they could develop the cooperation skills to work together and the determination to stick with an ongoing project. I hoped the undertaking would help them to learn patience, organization and customer service skills – and as I’ve written about here and here, they’ve learned a lot from the experience after their first eight weeks at it.

Interestingly, what I didn’t give much thought to when I first made my suggestion was the fact that if successful, they’d be raking in cash in a manner previously unknown to them. And they’ve been very successful indeed. So their piggy banks have swelled astoundingly over the past two months.

In Tim’s case, it hasn’t affected his spending habits much. He’s a saver; he’s sensible; and the material items he covets tend to be relatively expensive, like X-Box games or online memberships. So he tucked away his earnings for several weeks in a row and then bought a video game he really wanted. Now he’s saving once again.

Holly, on the other hand, is like a crow. Put simply, if it glitters or sparkles, it catches her eye and she wants it. And I don’t just mean jewelry or rhinestones; I mean kitsch. She’s been spending money ever since she started earning it. As the summer progressed, she put her hard-earned cash toward everything from earrings to quiz books to refrigerator magnets to hair clips to the ever-trendy Japanese erasers. And yes, she even bought a pillow pet: a giant stuffed bumble bee that unfolds into a plush pillow.

Since I wasn’t anticipating this newfound wealth on her part, I didn’t think about how much control I should have over it. At eight years old, Holly is old enough to understand what it means to be spending her own money, and she certainly understands the work she put into earning it: she’s right there at Tim’s side every week, greasing pans and beating eggs during the baking phase, and then staffing the booth with him every Saturday morning. So for the most part I’ve taken a hands-off attitude, merely reminding her frequently during our many shopping expeditions that she should think twice about what’s really worth buying and what’s not, but then letting her make her own decisions.

Rick did intervene once in a purchase he simply considered too irresponsible to watch transpire: she wanted to buy a rubber duckie from a sidewalk vendor. “She doesn’t even take baths,” he pointed out to me after firmly steering her away. “And even if it’s her own money she’s wasting, we have to take some responsibility for the environmental side of it. We have the right to tell her she can’t buy useless plastic that will end up in a landfill.”

I agreed with him in that case, but it’s not an easy call. Even as she spent money on odds and ends all summer, she was still saving a lot of it, and eventually she shared with me her scheme: during the last week of vacation, she hoped to do a spending spree at the Build-a-Bear Workshop at the mall.

She’s been asking for weeks now, and yesterday I finally caved and took her to the mall. On the one hand, I was loathe to see her lay out cash for stuffed animals (of which she has dozens already, naturally) and stuffed-animal outfits. On the other, as I’ve been telling her all summer, it’s her money and she has to decide for herself what to do with it. At Build-a-Bear, I asked her as she selected each item – first a stuffed owl, then a pile of outfits and accessories for the owl – “Is this really something you want? Do you really think this is worth buying?”

She did. I did not. And so I struggled with the question about whether to allow it. But I reminded myself these were not impulse buys; she’s been talking about the Build-a-Bear excursion for weeks. And I do believe that mistakes in spending are low-hanging fruit as far as object lessons go: surely as soon as she wishes she had the money for something else, she’ll start thinking more seriously about whether that workout suit and matching headband for the stuffed owl were really so important, and she’ll probably think harder about a similar purchase next time.

More significantly, she didn’t spend all her money at Build-a-Bear. She spent about two-thirds of it, but made a point of keeping some for later. And that amount went right back into her piggy bank when we returned home.

At the cash register, the Build-a-Bear associate tallied up the owl’s outfits and told Holly the total. Then she gave Holly the standard spiel about how she could add an extra dollar to the total as a contribution for a particular charity the company supports.

Holly looked uncertainly at me. “You don’t have to do that,” I told her.

“I do want to give the extra dollar,” she announced firmly. “I want to help.”

That made me feel a lot better about Holly’s spending habits. Not that a dollar for charity is much compared to her overall total, but if spending is going to be a long-term habit of hers, then I can only hope the donation to charity will be as well. In the end, I was proud of that decision if not so much the Build-a-Bear trip in general. But most likely as she grows older, Holly will put less of a priority on stuffed animals and outfit changes for them.

And as that change happens, I can only hope that her priority on charity remains.