CAN I HAVE A PENNY, PLEASE, DAD?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 121, 17 October 1941, Unnumbered Page

CAN I HAVE

A PENNY, PLEASE, DAD?

| Written for " The Listener"

by

K.

S.

Should Children Get Pocket Money?

ICHARD, aged 6, is the only one in our household to whom money is a joy and not a problem. For me, the socalled "head of the house," it is a constant source of worry trying to find enough; for my wife there are the bitter decisions of what she can afford to buy and what she can’t; but Richard has merely to ask for 1d to get it-and one humble brownie is to him wealth and joy untold. Shall it be an ice-cream, or a Sante chocolate, or aniseed balls, or gum babies, or a packet of chewing gum? He is blissfully unconscious of the heartbreaks that money can mean to a middle-class family on a fixed income at a time of rising prices. And we don’t want him to go through the trouble we once observed in a neighbour’s child who stole pennies ‘for sweets. Thrashing did no. good, the mother said over the fence, one day. I asked what he did with his own pocket money and she said he didn’t have any, and wasn’t likely to. Hence of course the trouble. * ok * EMEMBERING the advice I gave the neighbour of letting the child have some money of his own to spend

how he liked, I decided early to give Richard his own pocket-money. When he was about five I gave him 6d every Saturday, but I had started too earlyhe didn’t know what to do with it and the system died out. But I always gave him a penny on the rare occasions when he asked for one, and as he grew in understanding I extended the principle of so much a week for doing small jobs on Saturday morning-no work no pay tempered with great leniency was the rule. However, recently he has been losing his milk teeth, and from memory’s shadows I dug out the custom of my childhood of leaving the shed tooth under an egg-cup. overnight. By the morning the fairies had taken it and left 3d. One penny of this went on an icecream without delay and 2d was placed in a small baking-powder tin. A few days later the fairies exchanged another tooth for 3d but the 5d remained in the tin, as he was saving up for a caravan, no less. One day, however, his mother met him on the street proudly carrying his little tin, His great school pal, Ross, had come home with him, and suggested they buy some lollies. So together the two little 6-year-olds, in all innocence, climbed through the wash-house window, got the tin, and were setting out for the shop when they were met. They were perfectly open about it, and why ‘not? It was his money. bod % % ’ ESTERDAY, Richard came home and said: " Please could I have 6d to see a Chinese juggler (sic) at school to-morrow? Teacher says he is worth it."

=. It was certainly worth 6d to me at any rate, to see the little boy come home from school to-night with his eyes fairly poppingout with _§ tales of the wondrous

things he had seen — handkerchiefs burnt before his very eyes yet restored whole; eggs produced from the man’s mouth, and marbles from his ears; flags put into glasses and there tied in knots; a little man "only as big as a doll who could do hard sums and tell funny jokes" -all the ancient stock-in-trade of the travelling showman. "It was magic, all right, Dad," said Richard. Oh! to have a child’s simple eyes again, * * * BY accepted standards we are relatively poor people, but the children want for nothing. Richard and Ruth have good health, the company of one another to play with, dry shoes and warm clothing, a comfortable bed and ample meals, a lawn on which to play on fine days and an old shed with boxes for wet days, and a school quite handy where they get as good a schooling as the State can provide — and odd pennies for special treats. Millions of children in the world of to-day haven’t as much-some have never had it, others have had all this and more, and lost it in the war. Kiev is as big as Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin all put together. What has happened to all the little children who, only last month, tripped along the streets of Kiev to buy icecream?