Julia gets an allowance

We're trying to instill some responsibility into Julia by requiring her to clean up after herself every now and then. As any parent knows, this is a tough task because kids have a hard time listening anyway. For example, recently I picked up a candy wrapper that Julia had left on the floor and I said, "Do something with this."

Now an average person of average intelligence would have walked over to the trash can nearby and deposited it in the can to forever forget about its previous blight on our carpet. Unfortunately, that's not how a child's mind works. Julia proceeded to walk across the living room and then dropped it on the edge of the carpet, thereby moving the wrapper from one end of the room to the other end.

I exclaimed, "What are you doing? Pick it up and put it in the garbage can!"

Julie sighed, but did go back and grabbed the candy wrapper. The wrapper did make it finally to the garbage can, much to the chagrin of my daughter who doesn't seem to grasp the concept of trash yet. I'll often find band aid wrappers that are sitting on her bathroom counter, which is literally right above where the trash can is. I guess it just didn't occur to her to throw them there. She must have been saving them for some other purpose...

Trying to get her to eat cleanly is another exercise in futility. Every night, Julia gets a small, snack-sized bowl of popcorn. This has been the routine for years in our house. As hard as we try to make this a clean routine, it just doesn't work out that way. I'm often dismayed at how much mess one child can make while eating popcorn. Most people will grab one or two kernels at a time and pop them in their mouth. Not Julia. She grabs a small handful, which then is kind of dragged across her lips into her mouth. It's like watching the Cookie Monster eat. Invariably, the floor becomes littered with broken popped kernels.

I have a fairly new Hyundai Sante Fe. I try to keep it clean, but any effort I put forth in the front seat is always negated by the mess in the back seat, where Julia sits. Since we travel about 25 minutes to work, we usually give her some sort of snack like fruit snacks crackers. Then we'll occasionally get McDonalds or Burger King when we have to travel to another city. Then there are the occasional trips to the mall complete with a cookie. And let's not forget her pre-school, which seems to have ample activities planned that end with a big baggie of treats being sent home with the kids.

These and other chances for snacks leads to a back seat that's almost always in a state of disarray. I'll open the door for her one morning and seemingly overnight, the floor is strewn with fruit snack wrappers, bits of snacks and other pieces of paper.

Speaking of bits of paper, I swear that her pre-school has an agenda to unload a truckload of art supplies...

Last year, when Julia was in her first pre-school class (she went again this year because we didn't want her to start Kindergarten yet), I would come to her locker and almost every day there was some sort of drawing, painting or sculpture. The drawings and paintings were okay, but good God were there a lot of them. We ended up throwing a bunch away, but I swear you can stack up what we saved from that class and it would be 5 feet high. I have several tubs devoted just to the drawings and paintings that Julia brought home. The sculptures were worse because they were always covered with tons of glitter or flakes or glitter flakes or something that glittered while it flaked off when you picked it up. I once joked to her teacher that for Julia's last day I was going to have Julia give her a sculpture that had every conceivable type of glitter or flakes on it, so that when she tried to pick up, a ton would fall off it.

So I digress, but the art projects build up on the seat if I don't remember to take them out and they flake...

Cleaning up with Julia is an exercise in patience in and of itself. Laura always insists that Julia needs to learn to pick up after herself, or she'll end up like a slob. Now I'm sure she didn't quite mean me, even though I was and sometimes still am horrible at picking things up after myself (When not kept in check, I get an array of trash around me that Laura calls a 'sphere of influence.' Just check my desk sometime and you'll see.), but I got the message.

The routine usually goes like this. I tell Julia, "We are going to clean up today before we go anywhere."

Julia will groan and say, "I hate cleaning up. It's so boring!"

I'll tell her something easy like putting her toys away and she'll hem and haw and groan and put it off. Then she'll ask if we can go somewhere or if she can go out and play. Again, I'll remind her to clean. This goes on several times, until I literally have to pull her along with me and I'll have to get her started.

So I was talking the other day to a co-worker about this and she mentioned that her and her husband started to give a weekly allowance to their son, who is six-years-old. He's expected to do his chores and in exchange, he gets an allowance, which he gets to spend on anything that he wants.

I had heard of this 'allowance' ritual, but I was never familiar with it. We never got an allowance from our parents. Our allowance consisted of us getting money sporadically from our parents when we'd beg to go see a movie or go to the school skate night. Most of the time, they'd give us the money, so Mom I'm not complaining. However, I was a little envious of kids that had an allowance. They were usually the kids that had the latest toy that they'd bring to school to show off.

I had also read about allowances in books. Usually, the books that I read were about the misadventures of some school-aged kid (like Henry Huggins), who had to come up with some money fast to either buy a new football or because he had to pay for damages because he accidentally broke something. So he had to pay for it or his parents would find out. The character would beg his parents for an advance on his 'allowance', but was usually shot down.

I tried to come up with an allowance one day when I tallied up a list of things I did around the house (taking out the trash, mowing the lawn) and came up with a reasonable amount, which was 5 dollars a week.

I showed this to my parents who immediately shot it down with no negotiation.

"You don't need an allowance," one of them said. "You already do all of those chores for us for free."

Crap. I learned a valuable lesson that day. Don't give up the candy store and then expect payment. They had a point.

It's just a little frustrating sometimes when you're a kid and you want money. Our parents made the mistake of giving Bill and I our own little cash register banks. They looked like the old style cash registers and worked similarly. You had a slot for each type of coin. You put the money into the slot, pulled the lever and the total changed. At first it was cool because I saw that I had about 4 dollars and some odd cents in change. Then it was a little depressing because I had no outlet for more money. I worried how I was going to get that total up past ten dollars until I struck on a solution: raid the lunch money basket.

Our parents had a lunch money basket above the sink that my Dad would put dollars and change into. It was for us kids to buy a lunch ticket or a daily lunch at school. I ran upstairs and silently as I could retrieved the basket. I fished out some change and snuck back downstairs. Growing bolder, I went back for more and more change. Pretty soon, my total had doubled. Then I got even bolder and snagged some dollars (the machine had a slot for dollars, too). Ka-ching! I was in double digit land...for a few hours.

It was a Sunday and my Dad usually filled up the basket that day. He opened the cupboard and started to retrieve his wallet when he exclaimed, "Who's been taking money out of this basket?"

My Mom asked what was wrong.

My Dad said, "There was a lot more money in here today and now it's almost gone!"

He looked over at us eating and asked, "Which one of you kids took money out of this basket?!"

We all looked at each other and said nothing.

"Which one?" my Dad asked again.

I believe it was my brother, Bill, who gave me up as he saw me put all the money into my cash machine. I was ordered to get the cash machine and empty it. Sadly, I sad goodbye to my short-lived windfall.

(Note: Bill disputes that it was him, although he does remember the incident. My point is, regardless of who turned me in, I was turned in because I don't think I'd be that stupid to turn myself in. Granted, I have incriminated myself before and after but not this time.)

So as I was saying, we thought it would be a good time to offer Julia her allowance. A few Sundays ago, we brought up the topic to her. We explained that we expected her to clean up after her toys and in her room. If she did that, every week she would get an allowance. I had originally thought 5 dollars was pretty decent considering inflation. Laura, on the other hand, lobbied for 3 dollars, which is what we offered her.

The thought of money of her own slowly sunk in and she enthusiastically said, "OK!"

That day, it was like a dream. Julia picked up the floor of the living room upstairs. Downstairs, she worked for over an hour on picking up her toys off the floor and into their proper place. She would keep asking me if she was done, but when I pointed out new things for her to pick up, she didn't complain once! She kept on cleaning and cleaning and at one point even helped me move things to give the basement a good vacuuming. Finally, at the end of the day, Julia asked for her money.

"Can I have my two dollars now for my allowance?" she asked.

There was a wrinkle. Julia had met my allowance offer and counter offered with a lower price. I thought about reminding her that I had offered three dollars, but instead I said, "Okay. You can have your two dollars."

That's what the allowance has stood at.

The next week, things didn't go so smoothly. I mentioned that it was allowance day and that Julia needed to clean up before getting her allowance.

She thought a minute and said, "That's okay, I don't think I want my allowance."

Oh she's good! She re-countered her own counter offer by saying that now she didn't need my money! I'm assuming she thought that this would get her out of her chores, but I had to disagree with her. I reminded her that with our without an allowance, that she would still have to do her chores.

She thought again and finally said, "Okay. I'll take my allowance." With that, she helped clean although with some of the old complaining of "Am I done yet?" and "This is boring."

I guess one week of bliss was all that I was going to get...