A Hard Lesson. . .

We decided to go ahead and start giving our kids an allowance. The condition is that they cannot receive their monthly allowance unless their chores are done and their rooms are clean. This started in January. February brought, along with allowance, a hard lesson for my 7 year old daughter.

I'll give you a break down of how her allowance works. She gets ten dollars each month. One dollar (10%)of that goes to tithing, five dollars goes to savings and she is left with four dollars to spend. This month I happened to check on her lunch account before allowance time and found that she had purchased a dessert 6 times in two weeks. This was a problem since the original deal was that my children could choose one day each week to buy a dessert.

This girl, however, was currently grounded from buying desserts indefinitely because she has continually bought extra desserts each week. These treats cost 50 cents each, which isn't that big of a deal except that our kids get reduced cost lunch. Her lunch only costs 40 cents each day, so she is spending more on dessert than she does on lunch!

Here is the hard lesson part: After giving the kids their allowance I told my girl that she owed me $3. She was upset and wanted to know why so I told her about all of the desserts that she had been buying. I asked her who should have to pay for them since she was not supposed to be getting them. She understood, but wasn't happy. It was hard for me too, because I don't' like my kids to be unhappy. She had to learn that lesson though, and *hopefully* we won't have any more extra dessert ordering issues.