You guys are so funny! While I think you guys picked up on some good catches there (like the Lucky brand jeans) I think you guys might be a wee bit harsh! It's tough being a teenager, and if the parents are able to help their kids fit in without doing anything financially stupid, more power to them. As a parent, responding to your kids need to fit in with "If they judge you by your clothes they aren't really your friends!" is just plain mean, IMHO. These people are living a normal life and not making their children require years of therapy when they are older, all while not mortgaging their future. The article is short on details, though, and I suspect we'll see more stories like this. Once the economy gets going again, Paris Hilton and Robert Kiyosaki will have their turn again.
A family to cheer for - finally!
- Thread starter laurence
- Start date
Jus' wait 'til yours are teens...
We were lucky to turn our kid on to Goodwill & garage sales before she was old enough to get the grade-school scoop. We had some serious discussions one night after her "friends" told her that Goodwill's inventory came from dead people. These are the same kids who stick sharp pins into the myths of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
By contrast, yesterday our neighbor's sprinklers came on and a geyser erupted by the garage. The head of one of the sprinklers had broken and been blown off, resulting in an eight-foot-tall 25 gpm fountain.
I knocked on their front door and finally got the attention of their 16-year-old. She said "I don't know what to do about it!" and I asked her to show me the sprinkler controller. She said she didn't know where it was and I suggested the garage. But then she whipped out her cell phone and called her dad at work.
She hung up and said "He says to just leave it." I laughed, told her that was the wrong answer, and asked for her father's phone number. She said that she didn't know it; I suggested she look it up on her cell phone and read it to me. This as she was walking out the door to get into a friend's car, a path that took her directly by the house's new water feature. I asked her to let me into the garage and she said "I just locked myself out of the house." So I found the water valve at the street and shut off the house supply. I knocked in her car window to get her attention. She looked out and said "Oh, see, it stopped." I explained the cause & effect and was asking to speak to her dad when her phone rang. It was him.
While we talked, she was hopping about restlessly-- torn between a desire to get to wherever the friend was taking her but hostage to her cell phone in my hand. After I'd explained the situation to him, she practically snatched the phone back and peeled rubber.
She was such a cute girl when our neighborhood kids were 8-10 years old, playing together and selling Girl Scout cookies and hanging out at our house and all the other pack activities. But in the last three years she's turned into a total princess cheerleader. She's told our daughter that her life plan includes a rich man and a home full of designer duds. I can believe it.
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