Could Be Worse. I Could Be a Condescending Late Night Talk Show Host.

There's a certain irony that occasionally pops up in the realities people create for themselves, or should I say in the pictures of themselves that they paint with very broad brushes. It's a bit of a stereotype, I suppose: the teacher with the high school dropout son or daughter, or the cop whose kids are always in trouble with the law. I had a doctor once who went to jail for stealing prescription painkillers. My ex-husband was the "son of a preacher man". And now he's my ex-husband, so how's that for an explanation of what it was like to live with him?

As for myself, I work in the world of dollars and cents. That's about as specific as I ever care to get here about what I do for a living, but my point is that I spend many hours a week concentrating my attention on the proper use of one's money. And admittedly, because I have seen a thousand ways to make mistakes with it, I can be a bit of a tightwad personally. I prefer to think of myself as "frugal", or a "saver". But these were not the words of choice used by the aforementioned ex. But anyway.

This is my long-winded way of setting you up for the story of how I spent a good part of my weekend arguing with Sixth Grader about financial decision-making. Sixth Grader wants an iPod Touch in the worst way. And because "Santa" spent many hours last year store-hopping in search of Sixth Grader's current 4th generation iPod in the highly coveted purple hue that she requested, I am insisting that she save up her own money for it.

Where does Sixth Grader get money? From me, of course. But I do make her earn it. She and her sister have a whole list of potential chores and a very workable system that I created last spring just for the purpose of teaching this valuable lesson. To date, Sixth Grader has earned and saved more than half of what she needs to get her upgrade. She's so close. And then the mall gets her. Or, at least, it tries very, very hard to get her. This is why we found ourselves once again in a tangled mess of tears and yelling on Saturday afternoon. I took the girls to the mall for the express purpose of making my twice-a-year pilgrimage for work clothes for myself (yes, I shop for myself twice a year. And that's two more times a year than I did for about a decade.) I felt pretty good about the fact that I was exhibiting the payoff of my financial restraint right in front of their eyes - that I wait for the store I love to have its semi-annual sale, and to send me my 20% off coupon, and then I score BIG - but Sixth Grader didn't see it at all. Because she immediately deserted me.

She came back an hour later, clearly stressed. She had seen about a million things that she couldn't live without. She had her money with her. She bought nothing, because she is saving for her iPod Touch. It was NOT FAIR, she said. I said something very sympathetic, I'm sure, but she started to cry anyway. WHY can't I just give her some money to spend in the mall, just this ONE TIME? Uh, because I already gave you all that money in your little wallet there, sweetie, I said. Go ahead and buy something if you really want it, I said. More crying. She'll NEVER have enough money for an iPod Touch. NEVER. I reminded her of the many ways that she can continue to earn the rest of what she needs as we made our way out of the mall. It took a while, because she dragged herself about ten feet behind me, stopping to stare mournfully into several stores. We eventually made it to the car, where she escalated her grief to a series of bold statements about how unfair and mean I am. Can't I just GIVE her the rest of the money NOW and she'll owe me?

Ha. That's a good one.

After a brief, heated exchange with her, I managed to extract my emotions from the situation and return to parent mode. In parent mode, I counseled her that she did indeed seem to have a problem on her hands, and that she will have to figure out a way to solve it, but that making it my problem is not a viable solution. I then conveyed the parable of the Girl Who Waited for the Semi-Annual Sale to her, seeing as she missed the live performance. And again, we revisited the chore list.

It's the tiniest bit possible that some of this lesson actually sank in with her. Because Sunday afternoon she did about $16 worth of chores, all unprovoked. And she didn't cry once.

My point is, I do worry a little that I might end up with financial train wrecks for grown children someday. Simply because, like I said in the beginning, irony happens. But I try to do what I can to teach now, without being "preachy" or, god forbid, "uncool". And yet, I find myself worrying less and less about the "uncool" part. I still don't want to be preachy. But uncool is starting to look pretty good to me. On many parenting issues, I find myself much more drawn to uncool. Who knew? You spend your whole adolescence and young adulthood trying to be cool, and then, as a parent, uncool is the new cool.

That's what I'm going to tell myself, anyway.