.Thing morning I found my self in a bit of a parenting debacle. You see, my children work hard doing their chores each week and as a reward for their hard work, they get allowance that goes into three places: spending money, tithing to our church and savings. They choose to spend a healthy amount of their spending money at school on little toys called squishes. Along with the little toy comes a "code" which my children can enter on line to get prizes such as more virtual squishes, farm land, food a fish bowl to put the water squishes in....you get the point.
My oldest daughter is highly competitive and is DETERMINED to have more real life and virtual squishes then her younger brother. so each day she does her chores faithfully and even asks for extra chores for extra money.
My son, is.....a bit lazy. He misses his chores regularly and complains when he does do them. But he figured out how to beat the system a bit in the Virtual squishy world, and thus came my parenting debacle and a clearer understanding of free market verses the fairness doctrine.
My children noticed a few days ago that many kids at school were purchasing squishes but for whatever reason, most students saw no real value in the accompanying codes, so they tossed them on the play ground and went away with their prize in hand. My very competitive and smart daughter realized she could walk the playground and collect these items,in a short amount of time she would have MANY MANY more codes to enter on-line and her virtual kingdom could be built quickly!Her younger lazy brother also saw the value of what she was doing after her first "cash in" on the computer, so the next day guess what he did? He came home with about 30, he cleaned the playground leaving no stone unturned.
This morning I was greeted with tears from my daughter. " it's not fair! he gets out to the play ground earlier then me. By the time I get there most of the codes are gone. NOW he will get more squishes on-line then I will!!"
So how does this relate to free enterprise vs. the fairness doctrine you ask? isn't it Obvious?
If I were to teach my Daughter about being an entrepreneur, I would tell her how smart her Idea was, I would congratulate her on her already vast kingdom- and then the hard part- I tell her she has to not only search for new ideas to build her growing kingdom, but be happy that her brother worked hard on an idea they hatched together and was successful. Whats more, she CAN"T expect a pay out. She didn't DO anything to warrant one. If he is a nice boy, a kind boy, the way I am trying to raise him, hopefully he will let his wealth "trickle down" to her by sharing ( as she did the day before). BUT, since he earned it by himself I can't really take it away....in the name of "fairness".
Or could I? I am the mom right???
I mean I could tell him it was her Idea first, I could tell him it didn't matter if he worked all three recesses to collect them- she DESERVES to have the same size kingdom he does. Then I could take half of what he earned and give it to her, I mean it would be FAIR...right??
I don't think so...you see....I believe this generation is o.k with the fairness doctrine because no one gets their " feelings hurt". But what about my son who for the first time saw an opportunity and TOOK IT!He worked hard and saw the results, if I take it from him now, then why do the hard work? What will we create for our future if this is what we teach? I think we know the answer, if we teach our children every thing has to be fair or we can't be happy, we will create a generation of Lazy un happy people, its already happening and it starts by the way we parent and it ends with the way our society is run by those in charge. I pray we can find a leader who understand what is at stake here and in the mean time I will just keeping teaching mine whats most important in life. Hard work, love, faith and more maybe a little more hard work so we can keep the things we love and have faith in, alive...
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