SuZir
Well-Known Member
I'm celebrating the small and want to share with you because you probably do get it. My difficult child gave me one new showing of budding maturity yesterday. 
We have always been avid wild berry and mushroom pickers and from the point our sons have started to understand money, we have paid for them on going rate (there are several companies that buy wild berries and mushrooms from people picking them around here.) They were first able to buy some toys they wanted with the money, later they in fact made quite a good pocket money out of it. I just paid almost worth 300 dollars to easy child and berry season is just really beginning. (easy child is out to final sales to buy some brand name clothing. I refuse to pay over 100 dollars from pair of his jeans when he can get perfectly good and trendy jeans with 40 dollars, so he has to pay the difference if he wants brand names.)
difficult child was here long weekend and when he came, he brought over 6 gallons of cleaned golden chanterelles with him, because he lives in better chanterelle area than we do. If I went and bought that amount of chanterelles from market place I would have to pay about 200 dollars or more and they would not be cleaned. And during his stay he picked wild raspberries and blueberries worth around 150 dollars. That in itself is nice, but best part is to come: When I was offering him money for it, he declined!
He pointed out that he will be eating bigger part of berries than what he will be picking. Which is true, he will not be home much later in summer and early fall to pick more berries (and cranberries etc. are not yet even in season) and he has free access to our freezers. We have three huge chest freezers we fill every summer and when he visits home, he takes few gallons of berries with him every time (he only has a small 5 cu. ft under counter freezer in his home.) He saves a lot of money with that because buying your berries in small amounts and frozen during winter is very expensive (for example wild blueberry is around 10 dollars per pound.)
So he is right, but it is still very adult thinking from him. He was not thinking like a kid helping mommy to do chores and getting paid for it, but like an adult thinking ahead and saving lots of money for himself. And not only that, he also understood that he was the one benefiting and it would be juvenile to take money from me for something he is doing for his own benefit. That kind of thinking is very new for him and I'm extremely pleased to see it.
He will soon turn 19 and we have already bought him a nice present with husband (he didn't get much for his 18 birthday, but he has been really trying hard and making good choices during a year and we feel he deserves also some more concrete encouragement for that.) But now I'm feeling like indulging him even more. Maybe using the money he didn't take to buy him some movie tickets he can use for himself and his girlfriend during winter or promising to pay some concert or other event tickets for them, if they find something they would like to go to. His lifestyle and income level doesn't allow him that much self-indulging during the winter and he is in for another hard year in also other ways and I do feel some fun at times really wouldn't hurt him.
We have always been avid wild berry and mushroom pickers and from the point our sons have started to understand money, we have paid for them on going rate (there are several companies that buy wild berries and mushrooms from people picking them around here.) They were first able to buy some toys they wanted with the money, later they in fact made quite a good pocket money out of it. I just paid almost worth 300 dollars to easy child and berry season is just really beginning. (easy child is out to final sales to buy some brand name clothing. I refuse to pay over 100 dollars from pair of his jeans when he can get perfectly good and trendy jeans with 40 dollars, so he has to pay the difference if he wants brand names.)
difficult child was here long weekend and when he came, he brought over 6 gallons of cleaned golden chanterelles with him, because he lives in better chanterelle area than we do. If I went and bought that amount of chanterelles from market place I would have to pay about 200 dollars or more and they would not be cleaned. And during his stay he picked wild raspberries and blueberries worth around 150 dollars. That in itself is nice, but best part is to come: When I was offering him money for it, he declined!
He pointed out that he will be eating bigger part of berries than what he will be picking. Which is true, he will not be home much later in summer and early fall to pick more berries (and cranberries etc. are not yet even in season) and he has free access to our freezers. We have three huge chest freezers we fill every summer and when he visits home, he takes few gallons of berries with him every time (he only has a small 5 cu. ft under counter freezer in his home.) He saves a lot of money with that because buying your berries in small amounts and frozen during winter is very expensive (for example wild blueberry is around 10 dollars per pound.)
So he is right, but it is still very adult thinking from him. He was not thinking like a kid helping mommy to do chores and getting paid for it, but like an adult thinking ahead and saving lots of money for himself. And not only that, he also understood that he was the one benefiting and it would be juvenile to take money from me for something he is doing for his own benefit. That kind of thinking is very new for him and I'm extremely pleased to see it.
He will soon turn 19 and we have already bought him a nice present with husband (he didn't get much for his 18 birthday, but he has been really trying hard and making good choices during a year and we feel he deserves also some more concrete encouragement for that.) But now I'm feeling like indulging him even more. Maybe using the money he didn't take to buy him some movie tickets he can use for himself and his girlfriend during winter or promising to pay some concert or other event tickets for them, if they find something they would like to go to. His lifestyle and income level doesn't allow him that much self-indulging during the winter and he is in for another hard year in also other ways and I do feel some fun at times really wouldn't hurt him.
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