Aloha it’s Friday.
On Tuesday we were going to some friends’ house for dinner and to celebrate the husband’s dinner. During the day, my thoughtful 5-year old decided to make him a birthday card. She made it out of a piece of folded paper, put it in an evelope, and put a pretend stamp on it. Then she came to show it to me. When I opened it, a 10 dollar bill fell out of the card. She had received cards from relatives with money in them before and wanted to give our friend a similar gift.
I did not let her give him the money and tried to explain to her the value of $10 which went right over her head. My husband said we should have just let her give it, because it gives her a good perspective on money not being everything. He didn’t want to discourage her from giving. He actually said we should have let her give the money but ask our friend to give it back to us. That seems tacky to me.
So, that’s my question.
If your child wants to give a gift to someone that you wouldn’t personally give, would you let them?
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We recently had this come up! My oldest is 16 years old and has a girlfriend. We wanted to buy her an expensive gift for Christmas. We thought it was a lot to spend on her. We made our point and told him that if he wanted to still get this $75 gift he would have to get it with his own money. He learned not to get expensive gifts after the holidays.
March 6th, 2009 at 12:07 pmI wouldn’t have let Nattie or Abbie put money in the card. I would have just commended her on being so considerate and thoughtful. I may have discussed how receiving money is nice but we aren’t always in a position to give money to everybody we like or care about, so sometimes cards are a good alternative.
Where would you be able to draw the line if she gave it to him? Asking for it back does seem tacky (sorry Chris!) and then you could potentially get into a cycle of asking for money back everytime you had a birthday. LOL.
And that, folks, is my two cents.
March 6th, 2009 at 12:10 pmSure – but my kids are little so gifts consist of what they pick out at the dollar store or draw on paper!
March 6th, 2009 at 12:57 pmHeck Yes!…considering that we would now be 10 bucks richer!
March 6th, 2009 at 1:07 pmI agee with your husband. He seems like a very smart & compassionate man, wanting his daughter to learn to be generous. Maybe you could have taken this as an opportunity to teach her about liberalism too and had her go get some money from your other daughter’s piggy bank to give to your friend as well.
March 6th, 2009 at 1:12 pmOf course I would let them. Giving comes from the heart and you don’t want to squash that in your child no matter what your feelings for the person may be. Your child comes first.
March 6th, 2009 at 3:10 pmI would have let my kids give something although maybe not the 10. I probably would have tried to talk them into a smaller amount.
Aloha!
March 6th, 2009 at 6:36 pmMy kids are still really young, so I would definitely veto anything. When older if they want to pay for something it can come out of their money.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:22 pmprobably. but it depends on what he wanted to give
March 6th, 2009 at 9:46 pmI think that is so sweet of Ashlyn. Was that 10 bucks from her own piggy bank?
March 6th, 2009 at 10:06 pmMadelynn once did something similar last summer. She had just gotten birthday money from Grandma and the next day it was time to bring in offering money for Vacation Bible School for their mission. She put a TWENTY dollar bill in the envelope. It was from her birthday money. I explained how much money that was and she said she knew they needed it more than she did. Golly, did I cry and thank God for my generous girl! Of course, I let her take it in the next day. We have had to cut down on her generosity, like when she wants to give all our groceries that we just purchased to the homeless man on the side of the road…
I kind of agree with Chris on this one, although I wouldn’t ask for the money back (tacky, I agree). If a child gave me money like that, I would probably give it back to the parents without the child knowing, maybe your friend would’ve done the same. I think teaching generosity in this mostly-selfish world is so important, so I would’ve let her give it! There’s my two cents…although it was more like five!