Reality

Being a parent is kind of hard, and a little bit thankless. Last week I volunteered in Sarah's kindergarten classroom to teach Junior Achievement. For the introduction, we were supposed to introduce ourselves and tell where we work since it's an education course about commerce. So I introduced myself and said that I have two jobs. "My first job is the most important, and it's being Sarah's Mom." I then asked Sarah to come up and tell the kids my second job. I was sure she'd tell them I worked in a hospital and helped kids who were sick get better. She has been into work with me and often asks me about what I did when I get home, so I knew she could provide a pretty good explanation. She can even say 'speech pathologist' pretty intelligibly. So, imagine my chagrin when Sarah came to the front and said, "Oh yeah, my mom has another job. She cleans our house!" And then she sat down.

Last night Jared called me in the middle of young womens to ask me if I minded if he sell his flip flops to a lady who had had her shoes stolen while she was showering at the rec center. I did not think it through well and gave him bad advice- I said "Do whatever you want but you have to buy your own new shoes." When I got home after the activity, I found out he'd made $50 on his old worn-out swimming flip flops! I felt really bad that I had given him permission to take advantage of some poor lady who didn't have any shoes. How I wish I'd reflected a little more and persuaded him to take the opportunity for giving some service. So we had a discussion about this, and I told him I'd given bad advice, and I thought he should use the money to help someone else after he buys a new pair of flip flops. Well, an almost 12 year old is not really in a place to see the wisdom in that. So he went to bed mad that I first told him to do it and then I surprised attacked by telling him he had to use the money for something other than on himself.
This morning he had clearly thought a lot about it and definitely wanted to put the money towards his long board, and was bringing up past situations to justify keeping the money, i.e. when I pay other babysitters more than I pay him, I don't give him opportunities to earn money, etc... Any advice from some of you sage moms out there would be welcome at this point. I'm at a loss. How do I fix my mistake? Please comment and give me better advice than I gave.