My daughter feels cheated by a six-inch stuffed ferret, which recently took a $4 bite from her allowance. But I believe the furry ferret provided a long-term investment in my daughter's financial education.The back story: While shopping at a national chain store, my 11-year-old daughter stopped to watch an in-store infomercial, which featured an endless loop of a toy ferret executing tricks. On the screen, the toy looked so cute. "It had this invisible string," my daughter explained.
"The commercial showed it doing all these cool tricks and stuff," she said, adding that the ferret was tied to the transparent string that seemed invisible from a distance.
The reality: "The string broke the first time I tried using it," she said. "The ferret worked much better in the commercial."
Her $4-plus-tax lesson: "Commercials aren't always true."
As a parent, I learned the following lessons:
- Children (even teens and tweens) need adult supervision in stores.
- No matter how savvy you think your kids are, there's always more to teach and more to learn.
- Kids need decoders for advertisements, promotions and retail offers. Don't assume that your kid understands that strings are always attached. Something that is transparent to you may be a complete mystery to kids with money.
- It's important to let kids make minor shopping and spending mistakes with their money. In the ferret situation, the financial penalty delivered more value than any lecture I could have offered.
______________
2 comments:
You may want to suggest to her that she could do write an opinion of the product if you could find it on Amazon or another shopping website. Her mistake could be used to help other kids
If it broke on the first try, why didn't she take it back?
Post a Comment