Parenting Skills (or lack thereof)

My son likes to play the lottery.  He is 8 years old.  Ok, he likes us to play the lottery for him.  Which we do every month or so.

Why? If he wins big, he reasons, then we don’t have to work, or travel for work, and then we would get to be together 24/7 and end up killing each other.  (He doesn’t think about the last point.)

He has another reason.  He is endlessly fascinated by the rub-off function of finding out whether you win and by the incomprehensible instructions.

He has been winning some and we let him keep his “profit” — we take back the principal and he gets to put his winnings in his piggybank.  I have been thinking about teaching him about the cost of money — interest, exit fees, prepayment penalties and premiums — as well as keeping track of his losses so that we get repaid all of our principal before he takes a profit.  Real world stuff.  Most of my friends think I am nuts.

But I really want him to know that there are losses associated with the lottery and that he could lose more than he makes.  He needs to know that this is really not a feasible game plan for a self-sustaining future.  Also, because he is too young to have learned the lesson, “if it is too good to be true, then it is, and you need to run as fast as you can in the other direction.”

I have been thinking about how to introduce this subject without sounding like the Grinch who takes pennies from a child.  Then, the other day he asked, “what is addiction?”  We asked him why he asks and he said that on the back of lottery tickets, they write about getting help for gambling addictions.

Ok, a cool piece cardbard with potential prizes hidden all over has now spurred my 8 year-old to ask about addiction.

My son opened the door to the conversation.  POB (partner of blogger) and I walked across the threshold and gently talked about it.

So the biggest asset in the my parenting skills? My son.