Cheap Labor: Part 2

Thanks for the feedback on my previous post. I feel much better about what I pay my kids for their extra work. I was worried I was forcing slave labor here. I probably should have mentioned in my previous post that we do not give our kids an allowance as do some parents. I don't mean any offense by this but simply put, I don't believe in it. I feel that money should be earned and not handed out, which leads me to the main point of this post. Our girls each have an mp3 player. A few weeks ago Brittany got a little too careless with hers, dropped it, and it broke. I told her if she wanted a new one she'd have to replace it herself. She was a little upset but soon accepted the idea that she would have to come up with the money. Brit only does extra work to earn money when she wants something, and then she runs right out and spends it so she almost never has any cash lying around. She hasn't put much effort into earning money to replace the mp3 player until this past week.

We are headed to California on Wednesday (the kids will find this out on Monday night) and I think Brittany will really want her own music to listen to during our travels. This past Monday I pulled her aside and said, "I'm going to tell you something, its up to you whether or not you take my advice but you cannot ask me any questions. You may want to work really hard this week to earn extra money to buy a new mp3 player by next Monday." (My thought was that I'd take her to the store after school on Monday to buy a new mp3 player if she had the funds.) Of course she was curious but I refused to answer questions or have any further discussion. For once Brittany trusted what I said and she has worked amazingly hard this week. I told her she cold get a new mp3 player for $30 so that was her goal. She spent at least one hour doing extra chores each day after school and after her regular jobs were completed. This was a bit of a sacrifice, as we've had some nice weather a couple of days this past week and it would have been nice to play outside. Anyway, I can honestly say that I ran out of things for her to do and by this morning I was getting really creative. These are some of the things she did this week: Dust baseboards, clean laundry room, organize game closet, file papers, clean out and organize drawers/cupboards, clean out fridge, inventory food storage, fold laundry, and clean out window tracks. Brittany worked so hard and did each job well (she knew she'd have to redo it for free if the end result was sloppy). We went to Wal-Mart this afternoon and she is the proud owner of a brand new black 1G Sansa Clip. And she can't wait to learn why I told her to get this by Monday.