When my middle daughter was in high school, we were eating as a family at the pizza place where she worked part time. This daughter said that she and her friends were planning on going to a movie that weekend, and asked for movie and snack money. We said sure, and handed over some cash, probably a $20. While she was doing something else, her boss pulled us aside and said, "Do you have any idea how much she makes? She can pay for her own movie and snacks!" She was a delivery driver, getting significant tip money; he mentioned an average day's tips.
"I know," I said. "But she's still a kid, so we cover most stuff she wants to do. She only has to pay her own band fees, gas and insurance." He looked at us like we were crazy, and he was deeply unimpressed with our parenting.
"Oooookay," he said with raised eyebrows. "I just didn't know if you knew."
Yeah, we knew. We just figured that it's better for our kids to figure out how to handle money, and potentially make stupid choices, while they're kids and all their necessities are covered. Maybe that wasn't a great plan - I don't know. But even years later, it still seems like the best plan.
When the kids were little, and they got money for birthdays or Christmas, we helped them count out coins to pay tithing, encouraged them to put something in their college funds, and then pretty much let them decide what to do. By the time they were old enough to have their own jobs and paychecks, we were even more hands off. Don't want to save, or pay tithing? Want to spend it all on candy? Well, OK, but you may not like how that turns out, long term, but go for it. We have two who hate to spend any money, including for things that they really want, and two who would spend it before it was in their hands if they could. They all needed to figure out how to make money choices.
Having kept most of their choices in their own hands, I was really puzzled when my oldest, at roughly 11 or 12, said something about us "taking" money from the kids "to pay taxes." She said this with a considerable amount of anger, and narrowed eyes, but when I said, "What money?" she snapped, "Nothing. Never mind."
I wondered what kind of odd thing she was thinking of, but it was so far from reality that I just brushed it aside. In a few months, she brought it up again - "when you took our money to pay taxes." Again, when asked about what she meant, she responded, "Never mind."
As years went by, she'd bring it up not very often, but consistently once or twice a year. Sometimes, we'd be the only ones there, and sometimes other people would be with us, but we could not get her to explain what she meant.
We could not figure out what she was talking about. Did she mean a child credit on our income tax? We explained what that meant, and she looked blank. We tried very hard to explain all of our taxes - that income tax came out of paychecks before we got them, that our property taxes were paid with our mortgage payments, that sales tax was built into prices. We explained repeatedly over the years. She was probably 14 or 15 when I told her, again, "We have never, ever used money that belonged to you kids for taxes. Ever. We don't even use your money (meaning the savings accounts they'd had since birth, to which we contributed with every paycheck) for things like camp."
She rolled her eyes and said, "Whatever you used it for then."
"Used WHAT for?"
But the only response I ever got when asking her what money she meant was, "Nothing," or, "Never mind." It was maddening.
As she became an adult, we heard about it less often, but she'd still bring it up, and still refuse to explain what she meant.
When she was in her 30s, she made a passing reference again, and I said, "OK, you are going to have to explain to me what you are talking about, because we have never had any earthly idea."
She looked a little bit sheepish, but actually answered. "When you made us sign over our state fair checks."
Starting when they were literally in diapers, the kids usually entered something in the county or state fair - coloring, photography, and when they were older, scrapbooks and baking. We adults entered photos, crafts, baked goods. The kids wanted to be like us and get ribbons. The state fair also gave kids cash awards. It was $1 for a third place, $2 for a second place, and $3 for a first place. In reality, it usually just paid back the entry fees, which I think were $5 per child, but it was really exciting for the kids to feel that they'd won money.
Their first time entering the state fair was when the older kids were 7 and 8. They expected to be given cash, and were deeply disappointed when they were told it would be a check, and they had to wait for it to come in the mail.
When the checks came, they wanted to know how to spend them. We explained that checks were the same as Daddy's paychecks. They were used to watching us take their dad's paycheck and get it cashed every two weeks, but he cashed it at a casino. You can only do that after you're 21, we explained. "You have to take it to the credit union and sign it," we explained. "Then they'll hand you cash, or you could put it in your bank account."
"That'll take forever! When can we even go to the credit union?" Much complaining ensued. They wanted cash RIGHT NOW, because they'd already had to wait for the mail. This was despite the fact that they couldn't spend it at home, and couldn't go shopping without us.
"Well, as soon as you sign it, anyone can cash it," I said. "If you sign it, Dad can give you cash right now. Then when we get to the credit union, we can cash or deposit it." That sounded MUCH preferable to waiting, so they signed the checks and we handed them cash, probably $6 or $7 each.
The next year, they wanted to do the same thing - we asked, not assumed. Waiting is not a strong suit for children. They did it for years. Until they had their own paychecks coming in, and they handled checks themselves, they'd sign the fair checks, we'd hand them cash, and then we'd deposit the checks into their savings accounts. We told them we were depositing them into our account, but we weren't going to miss a few dollars.
I told her, "You signed the checks in order to cash them. We handed you cash for your checks, every single time. Then we deposited them in your bank accounts, so you actually got paid double for every one of those."
She looked stunned. "How much?"
"An average of $7 or $8 each. The year you won Grand Champion, I think it was $12."
"Oh." She looked sheepish again. "I thought it was a huge amount, like hundreds of dollars, and since I never had that much, I figured you guys took it."
"It was between $1 and $3 per ribbon, depending on placement."
"Oh."
I am just stunned, myself, by so much of this. My daughter has spent almost her entire life angry about something that she refused to discuss, even after bringing it up herself. That in and of itself is baffling. People, if something upsets you, talk to the people involved! This should have been an easy, quick fix, back when she was 12. Instead, we faced decades of, "Never mind." My daughter will avoid conflict whenever possible, so I'm sure that was her aim, but her actions actually created conflict. (If you bring something up, be prepared to discuss it! For everyone's sake!)
I'm also just baffled as to how a child who could read even when she got that first check, and who was always the one who opened the envelope with her check in it, did not know how much the checks were for. She understood decimals; we'd taught the kids that when writing things to do with money, things like prices, anything before "the period" was dollars, and behind it was cents. Plus, checks have the line with it written out - "six dollars and no/100 cents." Plus, she entered things in the fair up until she turned 18; in high school, her usual entry was her meticulously kept scrapbooks. She read the fair's entry packet, every year, and it spelled out the money involved. She also would have deposited those later checks herself, so she definitely ought to know what they said. How would she think that the checks were bigger when she was younger? Or that there was a separate check that she didn't see, but we cashed without a signature? Even if she misunderstood at 8, there were many more years when the process itself should have cleared up this confusion.
I just could not imagine how she wasn't clear on this. I'm an overexplainer, and the fair sent out a booklet, every year.
I think I've now figured it out, based on the first appearance of the "you took our money" complaint. That happened the year after her photo of a walrus took Grand Champion for the children's photo division. She got a huge purple rosette, and a ton of praise. Her uncle, a professional scenic and wildlife photographer, hung it in his living room (the only photo he displayed that wasn't his).
She was always worried about being out of step with her peers, or being wrong about anything, so she often took the opinions of other children as gospel. Kids have a tendency to take the word of their peers over their parents, anyway. I'll bet that when she mentioned earning Grand Champion to kids at school or at church, some kid said, "Wow, did you get a ton of money?" Instead of saying, "No way, the state fair doesn't hand out a ton of money," she started to worry that this kid knew something that she didn't. (She frequently worried that other people had access to information that was hidden from her.) Surely a Grand Champion got a ton of money! Where was it? She would not have accepted her own experience as making her the expert on this matter, even though she'd won the prize, and she'd entered for years, whereas the other kids may not even have known that the fair came with competitions for kids.
So, she decided that we took it. At least she decided that we had a good reason; fixating on "taxes" shows that she was starting to figure out how modern society works. At least she didn't figure that we partied with it.
I just cannot fathom this, though - that something that obviously made her so miserable was such an easy to explain misunderstanding. Why in the world did she not discuss this with us? Then again, would she have believed me when she was a kid? Obviously, she suspected us of something shady, when our entire motivation was to stop the complaining about waiting, by getting money into their hands as soon as the checks arrived. Note to self - just send complaining kids out of the room, and make them learn patience.
I'm just glad it's finally resolved. Good grief.
(I mean, it is resolved, right?)
