My brother and his wife want to teach their children to be responsible, and although the boys are 5 and 4 years old, I think that their parents are doing a great job of it.
At about this time last year, the oldest boy (he’ll be six in a month, so he was already in kindergarten at that point) started asking his parents for a Nintendo DS Lite. The younger brother, of course, immediately followed suit. It seemed that everyone at their daycare/kindergarten had a DS. One boy in the oldest’s class had had four in the time they’d known him, because everytime he lost or broke one, his parents bought him a new one right away.
(I’m painfully aware that I’m not a parent so I can never know what it’s like, but I don’t think that just giving anything and everything to kids helps them to value their belongings. You have no idea how many iPods, cellphones, etc. are taken away in my school (dangit, kids, STOP TEXTING IN CLASS!) and never claimed again. Last year I asked one of my kids why her very expensive cellphone was still down at the office after a month – she said “Oh, I told Mom I lost it so she just bought me a new one”. )
My brother explained to the boys that dropping over $100 for each of them to have a video game wasn’t in the cards. Their mom suggested that they start saving their money, and then they could buy their own. They sat down with them, explained that from now on they’d be receiving an allowance for doing chores around the house. They could put 25% of that for in a college fund (now I have to say that my brother and sister -in-law already have college funds set up for each of them but it doesn’t hurt to get the kids involved) and put it in the bank, 25% could be spent right away on whatever they wanted, and the remaining 50% would go into saving for their DS.
The chores weren’t big things like mowing the lawn or re-shingling the roof – they had to make their own beds, pick up their own toys, take their dishes to the sink when they were done eating, and make sure the dogs had food and water. They got $1 for every year of their age every week. The older boy would sometimes decide that all he wanted to do was save all the money, and not use the 25% at the dollar store, so it all went into savings (invariably, whenever he did that, his younger brother wanted to do the same). They applied the same method to any money they got as gifts for birthdays or at Christmas. And finally, this past weekend, they had each saved up the $100+ dollars it would cost for a DS Lite.
Unfortunately, there were no DS Lites anywhere on the Island. You wouldn’t believe how disappointed those two little boys were.
My brother and Rob went to Moncton yesterday (they went to watch wrestling. Yes they did. The tickets were a) my brother’s birthday gift from his wife and b) my husband’s birthday gift from HIS wife) and when they were done watching sweaty, oily men hugging each other, they went to the Toys R Us in the mall – where they found two DS Lites on sale for $30 off regular price. My brother snatched them up, then with the money that was left over bought each boy a game. The boys were asleep by the time my brother got home last night, so they had no idea that their DS’s had been purchased. When they woke up this morning, their parents sat them on the couch and gave them their hard-earned games – and the look on their faces was precious (I’ve seen pictures. I wish I could share). The older one got on the phone right away and told me that HE bought a DS FOR HIMSELF! I told him that I wanted to come over and play a game sometime. He thought that was a great idea (“But not today because I want to play it all by myself today, okay Tante? Not today. Maybe you can come over tomorrow, okay? Bring your puppies with you!”)

My sister-in-law put the photos up on her Facebook page. One of her friends immediately commented “Must be nice to be rich enough to buy two DS’s at once!”. The fact is that my brother’s family is not rich – not by a long shot. But they taught their children to save their money, and after a full year of working for it, these two little boys (just-turned-four and almost-six) have shown more financial responsibility than some adults I know. So hooray for those little boys, and hooray for their parents, who, in my opinion, have given their kids a gift that they will never outgrow.