For the past two years we've been quite careless about giving our eldest son his allowance. By that I mean that we keep on forgetting to give him his allowance on the assigned day. As a result, our son has begun to lose heart, thinking,now, that an allowance might not be something worth expecting. Whatever trust he might have had that we're going to keep our word about giving him an allowance is clearly diminished.
It also seems we're giving our son an insufficient amount of money. I'm convinced it's not a good idea to give a 10-year-old a lot of money. Something tells me that my son hasn't developed the necessary perseverance to keep extensive amounts of money for a long time with a specific purpose in mind. From experience I can say that fifth graders are still very concrete in their thinking. Long-term planning is a skill they begin to develop in Elementary School, but it's not a generally an acquired ability till the end of Middle School.
We've had to study the situation with a bit more detail; what other kids get, the level of tolerance to frustration of our child, his ability for long-term planning and our own capacity to be rigorous were just some of the factors at play.
From just briefly browsing on the net, there seems to be a general consensus that giving an allowance is a sound educational tool. Some parents give an allowance based on their child doing chores around the house. Others assign an allowance based on grades and good behavior. I give my eldest son an allowance whether he behaves or not, whether he gets good grades or not and whether he does chores or not. Getting grades at the level of his abilities, behaving well, and doing age-appropriate chores are expectations that emanate from being part of our family.
We've come to the agreement with our son that we'll give him an allowance on a specific day of the week, that he'll remind us and that the allowance is for a specific goal. If he wants more money than that of his allowance, he's going to have to do extra things to earn it. Yesterday he offered to rake the neighbor's front yard. There's nothing better than the sense of satisfaction that comes from a reward for work.
