Jboy13, the eldest son
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009Brasov, Romania
“What’ve you learnt over this past year?” I asked last week.
Jboy13 managed to reply, “How to empty a portapotti.”
Left alone for a few minutes, he then produced another answer (although I must say I remain grateful that he was such a competent loo-emptier, and saved me from ever having to complete the task).
”I now have a better understanding of money.”
Maybe it started here:
On a train in China, a man boarded with this little clipboard, and proceeded to give a long spiel about counterfeit money. Unfortunately for Joe Chinaman, it is impossible to tell whether a note is counterfeit or not – he even had samples for you to check. But fortunately for the passengers on the train, he also had a special little UV torch, which, if purchased on the spot, could be used to show you the authenticity of your notes. Another gadget is not what we needed, so we made a point of only using authorised money-changers and not using enormous denominations.
Jboy13, meanwhile, enjoyed inspecting the samples!
A few weeks later he was up near the top of Hong Kong’s tallest building, this time inspecting a display of the counterfeit measures taken in Hong Kong to protect their monetary system. Actually, make that systems plural – three different banks and the government all produce money there, each designing their own notes.
Added to these experiences, was the opportunity to *use* money. At home I don’t even carry five cents on me; I use a card for all purchases and so the children had rarely seen real money being used. Some smaller ones even thought if you produced your card you could buy whatever you wanted.
One of the things we wanted to do on the trip was to allow the kids to make money-decisions with us. And using *actual* money has made this very easy. Flashing a few baht in front of them in Thailand and asking them to decide whether it should be spent on a truck ride home or that we walk the three kilometres and buy ice-creams on the way started the process.
Comparing prices in different countries for the same products – a loaf of bread, a kilo of rice or the cheapest local fruit – enhanced their money-savviness, not to mention improved their mental arithmetic!
Today the older kids were sent out to do the day’s food shopping. They were given the freedom to walk further to a particular supermarket to buy the pasta at well under half the cost of getting it at the market and also buy themselves something with a portion of the savings – or to just get everything at the market and a closer supermarket. They came home with chocolate! WIN-WIN Actually, they really won; the man, who they bought a cauliflower from, would not accept any payment at all!!!
They have also had money of their own to spend. The six-year-old has struggled most with this; he could determine to save it all and precisely twenty-seven seconds later be tempted to the point of wanting to spend by a bag of lollies. More Than Once. Jboy13 limited his purchases to significant items: a watch, an electronic game and a crossbow. He still has money in the bank too. And now understands better what the numbers stand for (the children had always had virtual bank accounts kept in a notebook at home, and Jboy’s in particular had seen a lot of activity with his flower press business – but now it means so much more).
Being a boy, who pays an inordinate amount of attention to detail, he has noticed a lot more about money than any of the rest of us. In fact, it sparked an interest to compile a bunch of pictures of coins and notes every country we have visited for more than a day.….which then grew into a mind-numbing comprehensive array of details about other aspects of those countries, too – flag, capital city, official languages, population, average rainfall and temperature, and time zones (Russia is fascinating!)
Having produced this *stuff*, we thought it might as well have a broader purpose and should be displayed on the blog….if you would like to have a squiz, you can go to the pretty interesting stuff page. Sadly, to our DetailsMan, the computer will not support the non-latin scripts he so painstakingly gathered – each country written in its local script….so you’ll just have to imagine squiggles and dots and dashes and all sorts of interesting writing!
rayres