When Was the Last Time Your Kid Bought You Dinner?

by mzumtaylor on October 26, 2010

Yesterday a mother and her two sons came into the restaurant where I work while we were slow (which meant I had time to observe them while ostensibly waiting for them to order). The whole interaction turned out to be fascinating.

The sons were probably ten and twelve, maybe a little older, but not much (If the older son was a day over fourteen, I’d eat my hat). The older boy spent about five minutes walking his younger brother through the menu and then they stepped up to order.

The older brother made his younger brother order for himself, but was there to help him if he faltered, and after the mom had ordered her food, the older brother pulled out his wallet and paid the $20.53 for the meal, while the mom smiled beatifically in the background.

When they left, I wondered, as I often do of the transactions I witness at work, what the background of that situation was.

My guesses

  1. The older brother has saved up his allowance because his mom has told him and his brother that if they want to go out to dinner, they have to spend their own money on it;
  2. The older brother has some source of income outside of an allowance and has decided that he wants to treat his mom and his brother to dinner at his favorite restaurant;
  3. The older brother really wanted to have the experience of paying for dinner, so before they went into the restaurant, his mom gave him enough money to cover the meal and let him go through the whole transaction.

Any one of those scenarios would be pretty cool, but no matter what the situation, it struck me as totally awesome that a boy of no older than fourteen was taking the initiative in the transaction for his family’s meal.

Why it’s cool

When I was younger, if I needed to know something — say the hours a store was open, or if they carried a certain product — my dad always made me call myself. When I told him I was scared, he would tell me that if I didn’t do it today we wouldn’t be able go, and we’d just have to find some other time to do it. I would always call in the end, even though I was scared. The worst was when I called a place to find something out, forgot to ask some question, and my dad would make me call them back.

But the benefit of doing things like that when I was younger is that today, unlike many of the people my age, I am not afraid of talking on the phone. In fact, despite being a rather shy person, I can go up to anyone and ask them for help without feeling nervous because my dad encouraged me to do that kind of thing when I was little.

The young boy was learning the same lesson about money and interacting with service personnel that I learned about the phone and asking questions, and he’s getting a great head start on all of the other people his age who are too afraid to take part in such interactions themselves.

I mean, there are some families that come in where the kids can’t barely look at me, and they either let their parents order for them, or they direct all of their requests to their parents, who then relay the requests to me, and I just want to shake the parents and tell them, “Don’t you see how you’re handicapping your children?” But it’s not my place, so I hold my tongue, and instead rant about it on my blog. ^_^

Contrast those families with the young dad who came in with his three or four-year old daughter and when they got up to the counter she said, “Daddy, I want the usual.” And he told her, “The lady doesn’t know what your usual is, can you tell her what you want?” And the little girl went through and told me exactly what she wanted, even though she (probably) couldn’t read the menu board, but she knew how to ask for what she wanted, and I thought it was fantastic.

The point

The point is, people should learn to handle money as soon as possible when they’re children. They should learn to do a lot of things for themselves from a young age, but learning to handle money is especially important because we spent a lot of our lives dealing with money and trying to figure out the why’s and the how’s of it.

Far be it for me to tell anyone else how to raise their family, but when I have kids, I am definitely going to encourage them to handle as much as they can themselves, especially with money. I won’t leave them totally hanging, of course, but I want them to take initiative and see what they can do. I’m really looking forward to it.

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