I was told in a meeting that sharing financial worries with children is abusive - AIBU to think it isn’t?

[badgertwilight]

Obviously, you wouldn’t tell a four year old the ins and outs of your finances but I have always bee honest with my kids if we couldn’t afford something or had to be careful with regard to things like not wasting petrol or to please be careful with things like school bags as I couldn’t afford to replace them.

I don’t think I was abusive to my kids!

My parents were very open about finances with me. A couple of months before I turned 8 they bought a house and were frank about the fact that the mortgage was more than their previous rent and that the house needed lots of work, so we would have to be extra careful with money. At the time I was desperate for a She-ra duvet set for my new bedroom and I remember asking my mum a few weeks after we moved when the mortgage would be paid off and if I could get a She-ra duvet then. I was stunned when she told me it would take 25 years but happy when she told me we would wait until the January sales and maybe the She-ra duvet would be an option then. (It was and the pillowcase is still on a pillow on my bed now.)

I'm glad my parents were honest about finances. They are incredibly crafty people and learned all sorts of techniques like furniture upholstery, carpentry, glass cutting and beading, antique restoration, parquetry, metalwork, carpet laying, plumbing, mechanics etc and they did everything in the house themselves. From buying a cheap, ugly, but great quality second-hand furniture that they'd completely transform to my dad spending days at a time under our crappy car while he fixed whatever was wrong with it. And my parents would explain why they were doing that work, how much it saved them, how they couldn't afford a better car/mechanic, or a plumber or to get jobs in the house done if they didn't do everything themselves. But by doing things themselves they could manage to have a nice life. A lot of our stuff was rescued from other people's rubbish (my dad was a binman) and fixed up. My bike at one point was one he'd found dumped in the canal.

As a result I've grown up to be good with money. I live an awful lot better than my means. I'm extremely debt averse. I've never had an overdraft, never used a credit card for anything that I didn't have the money in my account to ensure it was paid off straight away. I had a mortgage for a little while but bought my "dream home" for cash at 35. My house is full of repurposed items, my dining chairs came with the house and I reupholstered them with material my dad found for a couple of quid in a charity shop. A shelving unit in my son's playroom is made from an old bedframe the previous occupants left behind. I couldn't live a fraction as well as I do if my parents hadn't been so open about their financial situation and open about why they had become as inventive as they were.

I once told dd1 no because mummy has no money - something like a Happy Meal I didn't want to buy. Dd1 interpreted that as we couldn't afford anything rather than I had no cash on me. She was a worrier! Made me feel awful when I realised what she'd thought. It also made me realise how carefully things have to be worded to children!!

Teaching has made me realise how burdened some (primary age) children are with real worries - obviously it would be unprofessional to say more but there are little people worrying about more than most people could ever imagine.

I can confirm that it is indeed very damaging to children to hear the ins and outs of their family's financial troubles. They can blame themselves and feel insecure about the future, it's horrible.

Weirdly, growing up I thought we had much less money than other families - I really believed we were the poorest because dm said we didn't have the money for things - but in fact she was putting it all in savings.

My self-esteem was through the floor as I never had anything new so I looked embarrassingly poor.

It would've been a better investment in the future to have let me occasionally have new (not charity shop) clothes, so I didn't feel constantly inferior.

I even wore second-hand underwear ffs

My mum used to tell me and my siblings the ins and outs of her financial woes. She seemed to feel better offloading on to us- I think I was about 5 the first time I knew we were close to losing our home. I on the other hand would go to bed with a huge ball of anxiety and guilt in my tummy and be unable to sleep.

There’s nothing wrong with telling your children “no I can’t afford that” or “please look after your stuff better it costs money to replace things”. But it isn’t fair to put worries about bailiffs, massive debts, scared of being able to afford to eat on your children’s shoulders.

In my view, sharing financial realities is fine (and in the very long run helpful to a child), sharing financial worries/stresses less so, although obviously it becomes difficult when the two increasingly overlap - I think then the way things are dealt with is paramount. Calm and matter-of-fact, as much detail as necessary but no more.

We have somewhat different financial priorities from a lot of the families dc encounter via schoolmates. So we spend quite a lot on extracurriculars and (for want of a much better word) 'enriching' activities, but don't have flash holidays (try to get to the UK for a week or so once a year to reconnect them with that side of their heritage - I'm a Brit and dh is German - but would never spend on flying off for a week of sun, iyswim), kept our inherited car until it was literally falling apart, we have fairly basic tech (my phone is 4yo and was a pretty bottom-of-the-range model back then) and rarely upgrade. So there have been conversations about the non-limitless nature of money and about priorities when they have assumed we must be 'hard up' because we don't do big holidays and regularly replaced flashy phones.

Children need to know that money is a finite resource.

Mine learnt early on that they did not get something everytime we went shopping.

They need to know that pe kits and uniform costs money and need to take responsibility for looking after it at secondary school. (Or earlier)

They need to learn that if you buy one thing then you might not be able to buy another. Spending money is about choices.

You also need to teach them to prioritise bills above takeaways etc.

You increase this knowledge and responsibility as they get older otherwise you will be releasing financially illiterate adults into the world. If

I think it depends on the child.

When the children were little I said a couple of times we "didn't have the money for it" when they asked for something, like, say McDonalds. What I meant was that I chose not to spend my money on it or I didn't have the cash at the time.
Dd1 got really worried that we had no money, and were going to starve etc. She was a worrier, and not one to express it, so that took quite a while to unwind.

If it's in a child protection meeting then presumably it's part of a bigger picture. On it's own it probably isn't abusive, however it can be one of many parts that does add up to abuse.

My mum was a widowed single parent by the time I was 13. I practically knew all her financial woes by time I was 16 (credit card debt, how much in over-draft etc) and sometime she would ask me for money to make ends before the tax credit / wages came through.

I am fine, it has taught me the art of hard graft, never to over-spend and budget properly.

^I had a part time job.

my Mum used to sit at the dining table night after night working out her finances, crying and saying she wanted to run away and die. We knew that money was always a big issue. We got very little for Christmas except perhaps a book and a few pens. (she always had enough for gin and wine though...)

There is a middle ground to tread. Teaching them money doesn't grow on trees and budgeting isn't the same as scaring them with real money worries.

Yulebealrite yes, exactly!

Money is tight here so I'm often saying we can't afford things like take aways, overseas holidays, etc when the DC ask. DD(11) got worried recently about our 'lack of money so I explained that we always have enough money to pay the mortgage and bills and buy food for meals, it's just the extras that we can't always afford.

When I did have major financial worries a few years ago the DC knew that things were very tight (lost my job so no hiding that fact) but not the extent of it. I would only talk to the DC about it once decisions had been made. So if I'd needed to sell the house I would have explained that we'd be moving into a rented property. At least then they know what the solution is and you can put a positive spin on it.

So yes and no, children need to learn how money works but they shouldn't be burdened with money worries.

YANBU children should be aware of what is going on. I was told nothing as a child whatseoever and it was very scary as I felt I had no control at all. Things just happened to me without any explanation.
Of course you have to temper it for the age group but a brief explanation about how things are tight at the moment along with how things will improve in the future doesn't hurt at all.
It gives kids a sense of realism and control.
It is a lot better than seeing my mum crying over our poverty all the time with no explanation, I still rememebr the fear I felt 50 years later.

Or mantra has always been "you can only spend it once. If we buy that then we can't buy x,y and z."
The kids realise that other people in other families choose to spend their money on other things or perhaps don't save. We discuss finances but not in a negative way. But then we've never been on the breadline.

Teaching budgeting is useful for children and a skill they need to aquire. Burdening them with money worries I would agree is EA.

There are a lot of things some parents fail to sheild their children from not just money. Some won't have the stress free childhood they should have.

Love Boobootwos thread,

I think many children today fear being poor and ask this question as per PP, because they've been exposed to poverty whether experiencing it or not.

I grew up with my Grandma who had a grocery shop. I spent a lot of time in there and it's where I learned economics as a business and at home. My parents were busy working and it was in the early 70s. Their mortgage rate tripled overnight and both had to get jobs to pull in extra money.

I remember it all very well. They didn't share their woes, but my dad was frugal and we in relative poverty.

My own children - I've shared home economics with them since they went to high school. Money management is vital and lacking in schools and homes today. The rise of pay day loans use has placed my dd's friend into a dire state of financial mess. It's terrifying to watch.

In child protection, and I have worked in this sector, I found that some professionals were unable to separate what are normal family cHallenges from CP concerns. This has been evident in some of the reports I have had on my desk. Burdening a child with financial worries is far too big a burden for little shoulders to bear. Being mindful of money management, encouraging children to save a few pennies in a jam jar (I'm old) is a country mile apart. Saving up for luxuries, etc

I must admit i have a niece and nephew (same family) and they always talk about 'good week' and 'bad week' and it doesn't sit right with me that even from a young age they had this hanging over them.

Talking abiut budgeting etc is valuable but passing on financial woes to young children i dont think is fair.

Fwiw my family were what i would call fairly poor when we were kids and whilst we knew we could never have we wanted and we would have dodgey teas which probably gave it away a bit i never was told we had no money or worried about it.

I think the important thing here is detail.
My DC knew from a very early age that we couldn’t afford certain things so if they were writing to Santa they knew not to ask for a Nintendo Gameboy (for example) as it was outside the family budget. They knew we couldn’t have takeaways every week because it was too expensive or that M&S was ‘posh’ and we shopped at Peacocks and Asda because they were better value. However they didn’t know the details of the finances. They were never burdened with the worries or choices that being hard up brings. If there were unexpected, unavoidable expenses like a pair of glasses or new shoes we made it happen and they were unaware of the juggling and sacrifices that went on behind the scenes.

Happily those days are far behind us and we have enough money for anything we need now and from things the (now adult) DC have said they remain unaware that we were poor back then. We sheltered them from that reality but they still know that you can’t afford everything we want and that some things have to be aspirations and dreams.

Frasersmummy I hope you and your lad have the best of luck in 2019 x

I think it depends on the child - my friend's boy is a real worrier and is shielded more than my boy (similar financial circumstances) and that's completely fine.

I do worry that as we become more and more cashless it's harder for DCs to understand that money is finite and am contemplating doing things like paying cash for the shopping when I'm with DS in the new year.

It's all about context. If the child doesn't feel like the parents can take care of them and as a result grows up feeling unsafe then that is a problem. I can see how sharing financial worries could contribute to that.

I have a friend who is very poor at managing her money and as a result the fridge would often be empty until someone lent her some money. I imagine this didn't feel like a very safe envt for her child growing up not knowing if they were going to be able to eat or be evicted etc. And she shared all these worries with her.

There's a difference between that and me saying to DD that we can't afford a £250 Barbie dream house because we have to think about what we spend our money on.

I grew in a quite poor environment (not on the UK, so third world poverty).
I remember signing up in the summer term when I was 10 or so for a language class for the following year at school, finding out only later from friends that it was offered on a paid-for basis (around £2 per term). I seriously considered running away that summer so that my parents won't have to pay. Actually, the only thing that stopped me was that the local railway station had a fire and was closed for a couple of months. And my parents were incredibly careful discussing money issues, I was never exposed directly to their worries, but obviously I understood that we were poor. I remember until now that feeling of cold determination of a 10 year old me to get rid of myself.
The poster above who said that the children have no frame of reference when it comes to money is right. £2 felt like an absolute fortune to me at the time (my total annual pocket money were probably under 10p), and I was worried sick that my parents will be thrown to a debt prison / will have to work nights for some evil sweat shop owner etc (I was also a well read and impressionable child). It turned out that they were happy that I signed up, and £2 turned out to be manageable. And even if it wasn't, it turns out that there is such thing as "cancellation".