Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week, a question came up from a parent about allowances, about giving money to kids. And we kind of worked through it, but we worked through it with the frame of the three developmental stages of childhood.
Because clearly, a child's understanding of money is going to change as they change, as they develop, as they become more socially and emotionally and, frankly, neurologically mature, their understanding of money is going to shift. At first, when they're very little, the scaffolding that we need to put in place with children and money is quite substantial. As they get into their tween years, their middle childhood years, 9, 10, 11, 12, the scaffolding can become a little bit less.
And then as they enter their teen years, we can really start to remove the scaffolding in hope that they can handle their money in a way that is making good choices. So the first thing that I want to clarify about allowances is that some families just prefer not to do it, really. It's not a part of what they do.
And that is completely fine to be respected. And to be honest, we didn't really have allowances in our family. However, there are other families that feel allowances are good things because they teach children how to manage money.
Okay, so if you're in that camp, so to speak, of allowing allowances, here's some advice. Firstly, coming back to this developmental stages, when a child is little, they are in what I have called in my book The Soul of Discipline. They're in the governor phase, where the governor is kind of a benevolent sovereign, not a benevolent dictator.
But in terms of allowances for a little one, a three-, four-, five-, six-year-old, the money that they have and the way that it is spent is 100% the decision, I believe, that it needs to be the decision of a parent. A child can request things, but the decision is made by the parent. In this next phase of life, around about sort of eight, nine, and then through to 10, 11, 12, even 13, I call this the gardener stage.
A good gardener knows the shape of the garden, knows the shape of the family, knows the family values, because money often is connected to values, what we buy, what we don't buy, and yet will listen. It's lovely to listen to a nine-, 10-, 11-year-old explain what it is they want to do with their money. And so that's a conversation around, well, tell me your plans, tell me what you want to do with it, okay, and why is that important now? Oh, so could part of that purchase work for now and you can save up and get more later? How does that work for you? I mean, it really is a listening, because our children at eight or nine do not want to be treated like babies, but they do not have the decision-making capacity of an 18-year-old.
They just don't. And so what we're doing at this stage is listening, coaching them in how to speak properly about it so it's respectful, and then letting them know that, huh, okay, oh, well, I'm going to think about that, and I'll let you know tonight what it is we'll be doing. So you could say, but it's their money.
It's not. It's not their money. It's family money, and as the guider of the family, of the holder of the family values, a parent still needs to make that decision.
But look, a little tip here. When we do make that decision, let them know that they're, that them explaining what it was they wanted to do and why really influenced your decision about the purchase, and it could be 100% agreement or it could be 100% disagreement or anything in between, that a little bit of that is good, but not all of it. But that's the gardener stage.
Now when our kids are older still, now they're 14, 15, 17, 18 years old, in the Soul of Discipline book I call this the guide phase, where kids this age can be spectacularly disinterested in our opinions, at least outwardly. I think inwardly they probably absorb them a little, but this age I find is like the best conversations I've ever had with teenagers have been about their direction and not about my opinion. Furthermore, it's about their direction or their emerging direction and whether that purchase that they're proposing is helping them go in that direction or whether it'll be a real distraction to their direction.
For example, they might want to get a new console or a new video game and they're already struggling with their schoolwork and they're already worried about the addictive nature of gaming, and rightly so, I might add. So the purchase of a brand new console with the really hyped video game of the day, they may really want to do that and it's expensive, it's hundreds of dollars. And the conversation is around is that a distraction to you, like to a 16-year-old perhaps, really starting to aim towards wanting to get into a certain college course or whatever it is, because that's going to need some time.
You're in 11th grade and now a junior and there's SAT stuff to do, there's all kinds of applications to make. Do you think that purchase of a brand new console and a bunch of new game, video games to go with it, isn't that a distraction to your direction? Again, Governor, Gardener, Guide, the three boundaries and the three differentiations, the Governor for the little child, I will decide what our money is spent on. The Gardener, I will decide, but only after really tuning in and listening to you, if you're being respectful.
And then the Guide, is that a distraction or a direction? Now, lastly, I really do want to emphasize that I believe allowances should not be connected to work. They should not fall into the behavior modification heffalump pit, you know, where if you do this, I will give you this money. If your jobs are done, then you get it.
If your jobs are not done, you don't or I take it away. An allowance is about, it's about, it's about, it's about the connection between us. It's about our relationship.
It's about our values. It's about our family. And I really do believe it needs to be disconnected from reward and punishment at this age.
Later on, those two things might become connected in life. But with children, it's noticeably different. I'm going to suggest that it's separated and that from, if you do this, you get this.
If you don't, you don't get that. Because then a child's not going to, they don't do what is right for the family. They do what is advantageous for them getting money.
And if you follow that road too far, you turn your kids into expert negotiators. And again, they don't do what is right. They do what is advantageous and they'll come back and they will bug you and bug you and bug you to try and break you down.
Whereas if an allowance, should you wish to go in this direction, is about you as a parent placing money aside for them, however you do that, placing money aside for them, and then it's seen as a family discussion as to how that money is used, then we're in the realm of relationship. It's relational and not transactional. So, I hope that's helpful.
There are a lot of other layers to this, aren't there? But I wanted to explore those. And as always, if you want to chat with me personally, go right to simplicityparenting.com and contact us. And there's nothing I prefer to do more than chat with you.
Okay, that's it for this week. Bye bye for now.
