Sunday, September 11, 2011

i want i want i want

Following on from the (dubious) success of the bead reward system, I agreed to take the children to spend their earnings.

The little engineer has developed an aversion to the $2 shop (et al), thanks to the last couple of purchases breaking almost immediately.  His response - well it's just cheap rubbish there!   The dancing queen is really only interested in buying lollies and stationary.

So, in a flash of inspiration I offered to take them to the Saturday market in the city.  The main street of quite a poor neighbourhood is shut down every weekend and the street is filled with stall holders selling second hand clothes, imported Chinese knock-off games, dodgy jewellery and food of questionable nutritional value.  Add in lots of buskers selling Cd's of their music, thousands of people negotiating prams and dogs, and it has quite the atmosphere for a morning out.

We'd only been there 2 minutes and it started.  I want this.  I want that.  I want candyfloss.  I want hot chips.  I want that plastic helicopter.  It was revolting.  Whilst I was happy for the children to have some jurisdiction over how they spent their money ($5 each), I also had some restrictions.  Unfortunately, everything they wanted was on the embargoed list.

I endured an hour before escaping to the calm and order of K-Mart.

1 comment:

Broot said...

Yes, we have banned the $2 shop for the same reason. Plus we have managed to convince the kids (barely) that saving up for the $10-$20 toy with their own money will be more satisfying and last longer. They are still dubious, but it seems to be working. ;)