Daughter thinks we are poor

[MollysMummy2010]

This is no way a stealth brag as I know I am reasonably lucky.

Between me and DH we earn £90k per year but we live in London and poor choices in our youth mean we rent. My 9 year old DD has a small bedroom but has lived in the same place all her life. She has (pre Covid) had all the opportunities her friends have had re clubs, activities etc and I don't think she is aware that we rent rather then own our home.

Some of her friends live in huge houses and she seems to resent us for the fact that we don't. I try to teach her the value of money, and also, that as there are only three of us, how much space to we really need?

I am worried she will be embarrassed but don't want her to be!
What do I do?

Does she watch the breakfast news before school, mine did by this age. If you start your day seeing what is going on in India at the moment it’s difficult to feel hard done to.
Also when you get the little whine about “so and so has a better phone”, you immediately reply with “some people are struggling to feed their families”. She needs to understand that she will always come across people better off than her but equally there are lots she may not notice who are much worse off.

@Oneweekleft You make a good point about comparing what a child might have that's different but just as valuable as a more financially rich friend.

A friends son (9) complained a while ago that his mate over the road lived in a bigger house and had the PS5 as soon as it came out.

It was gently pointed out to him that while he didn't have that, he did have Dad at home every day after school (he chooses to work nights so he can be there at home time, hates the thought the DC would come home to an empty house) and available to take him to the hobby they both love every weekend. The kid with the PS5 barely sees his Dad, because he's working so manically for the bigger house and the trappings of it.

It's all relative.

I think that's a great opportunity to play along and agree you're "poor" so you don't have to buy her all the latest toys and gadgets. My parents convinced me that Nintendo64 was incredibly expensive for for years I thought I couldn't have one because they couldn't afford it.

But in all seriousness, it's good life training for kids to learn that people live in all kinds of circumstances without judgement. The underlying problem is that as soon as kids/teens start to question their own lifestyle and want their parents to "upgrade", they're also judging those who still live in that way. At the same time, if the message is given that rich people can only afford homes because they're all secretly in debt or had inheritances then it creates a reverse snobbery rooted in envy (which is hugely prevalent on MN).

It's really difficult and I think in London especially you can find extreme divergences in wealth/income on the same street even - round my way the houses go for £1.5m but some are council-owned and were split into 8 bedsitters in the 1960s.

I only have a young child but for us the message is "Not everyone has the same amount of money, and not everyone chooses to do the same with the money they have."

It's tricky, even for adults I think. We're high earners and even I sometimes look at one of the neighbours' cars and have a moment of "It's not faaaiir!" - it does happen and it needs thinking through and discussing.

"I volunteer at a FB and a parent actually asked if his DS could come and 'watch' as the food he had kindly donated was given out ..... do people really think that would be acceptable?"

@Ragwort the mind boggles. This thread does go to show that people do think it is acceptable.

"Take her to a foodbank"
"This is why I want to take DD to India"
"Find a friend with a council flat"

Seriously, what a sad sad world.

It is all relative OP. I consider myself very lucky and well off but my daughter got a double scholarship to a well known independent school and chose that over the superselective grammar, she is now surrounded by some truly, very rich kids (eg kids of Russian oligarchs, international jet set). In the grammar, she would have been one of the “rich” kids. My worldwide standards your DD is incredibly privileged and well off. We need to teach our children to be grateful for what they have and realise how lucky they are. Same applies to us as adults.

Good time to point out that this is why working hard is important at school so she can have the best chance of the opportunities money can bring, whilst simultaneously introducing the concept of how happy we can be if our needs are met, even if we don't get our wants ( and that wanting more is infinite if you allow that to dictate your happiness)

A friend of mine grew up feeling poor, like she had far less than everyone else around her. It wasn’t necessarily true but her parents were strict and old fashioned and believed a child should not be spoiled with material goods. She never went without but her self esteem suffered badly. Each time her friends had a new outfit for the disco or a new school bag in September whilst she made do with her old but still functioning one, it chipped away at her confidence which she never recovered. She has lacked self esteem her whole life which really held her back.

This may happen when you grow up the poorest of a wealthy neighbourhood. However, as other posters have said nowaydays when wealth from instagramers and influencers seems to rule. It is hard for kids not to feel poor. Sad!

With that income OP you could easily buy a house far less than 90 minutes away from London. Just look at where the tubes go for the side you need. Lots of people move for property prices.

To add- it’s better to buy simply because you’re paying your own mortgage and one day that will finish and the money will be yours

Thanks so much! Those of us renting simply never understood that buying was better, and we get to keep the house. We just thought it was so much fun to piss away huge amounts of money every month and have nothing at the end of it despite paying enough to have bought TWO houses in that time.
You're just so much cleverer than we are. That's why you have a house.

@LostInTime

My DD also thinks we're poor, because we won't buy her a smart phone and we don't have thousands of gadgets or a massive house. I have explained over and over about land values in England and cost of housing (she's 15, not 9!) but it goes in one ear, out of the other. She has friends that live in 6bed homes but doesn't appreciate that they're living with PILs/BILs/SILs in multigenerational households. 25% of her school get PP grant, so there's plenty in social housing, flats, houses of all sizes etc. No idea what the answer is.

@LostInTime given your DD's age it is time to have some serious conversations about educational choices/achievements and what sort of jobs/income those are likely to lead to. Find out what her friend's fancy houses would cost to buy and say "if you wanted to buy XXX's house today you'd need an income of £150,000 per year" and talk about what jobs someone aged 25/35/45 with that income would probably be doing. I know it's hard to get teenagers to listen but I really wish someone had done that for me!

I dare say it’s hard for a 9 year old not to compare her lot with the friends she sees all the time. I do have some sympathy, since my folks were always apparently worse off than those of most of my school friends - nice new clothes instead of a few hand me downs, riding lessons, ballet lessons, etc. were some of the things I longed for but didn’t even ask for, because I was well aware from a very young age of just how tight money was.

You can only try to show her how comparatively lucky she is compared to so many in the world, not to mention in the U.K., who’d consider any bedroom of their own, however small, plus of course running hot water and heating, to be a luxury.
Maybe she will need to be older, but I’m sure the penny will eventually drop.

Our dds had friends with bigger houses, some with swimming pools and apparently endless expensive new clothes, etc., but we were comfortable enough and I don’t think they ever felt poor.

However IMO it only truly dawned on them how comparatively lucky they were when we took them on a safari holiday to Kenya (yes, I know how that sounds, it was a comparative cheapie 3 rather than 5 job) when they were maybe 15 and 18.

Almost everywhere the safari vehicle stopped, children were surrounding it, clamouring for pens.
At one point I bought a whole box of Bics, in order to have enough to dish out.
Dds truly marvelled at how happy the kids were, just to get a pen. It was the first time IMO that the penny really dropped.
One dd eventually went on to work for an aid organisation, and has worked in that sector for some 20 years now.

Dc1 had similar remarks from that age until quite recently (he is 17yo now).

My answer has always been that

• people chose to spend money of different things or not to spend money and that’s ok. You always need to be very careful to assume one person is rich or poor just by the size of their house/the clothes they wear. I am lucky that my parents are wealthy but really dint look like it so they are a good example there!
• she is lucky because she can do A and B that she loves. Isn’t that the most important.
• having more money/bigger house doesn’t make you happier.

But more importantly, I have always felt confident that our choices are ok and we are doing well enough. I think that confidence is important and from your post, I think the issue is more that you think YOU have somehow failed rather than her questions/comments iyswim.

The message i took from private school and then working in ' poor' countries id that money can only buy you happiness to a certain extent. Once your needs are met, it seems like humans can never get enough of the wants. Nowt wrong with dreams but there are many rich folk who aren't happy.

My children think we are rich because on Fridays we give them each £5 to buy Pokemon cards and candy 🤣

@KeyboardWorriers

I don't think it is ok to criticize the child in this situation.

Our reality is largely set by our experiences, especially at that age. So if she is surrounded by far wealthier children she is going to have a skewed perception of reality.

Yes as parents we can continue to ensure our children are aware of other lives and how much harder they might be. But we can't deny her reality, in the world she mainly inhabits she has far less than a lot of the other children.

Exactly this.

In the child's reality, she IS poor. In comparison to everyone she is looking at and her everyday experiences, she has less than others.

Obviously, we all know that she is not poor - but that's because we're adults and have more life experience and can understand that the world extends beyond our own neighbourhood and social network.

Asking a child to understand this at 9 is a big ask, but perhaps there are ways you could start to try and teach her that no, we are not poor, your friends are rich.

@blueangel19

A friend of mine grew up feeling poor, like she had far less than everyone else around her. It wasn’t necessarily true but her parents were strict and old fashioned and believed a child should not be spoiled with material goods. She never went without but her self esteem suffered badly. Each time her friends had a new outfit for the disco or a new school bag in September whilst she made do with her old but still functioning one, it chipped away at her confidence which she never recovered. She has lacked self esteem her whole life which really held her back.

This may happen when you grow up the poorest of a wealthy neighbourhood. However, as other posters have said nowaydays when wealth from instagramers and influencers seems to rule. It is hard for kids not to feel poor. Sad!

I don’t think it’s necessarily true though.

I was raised like this but never felt it was an issue with ‘we dint have enough money to buy that’ but a life choice, that was clearly explained to me.

I think you create a situation where children grow to feel uncomfortable when

• as a parent you actually think you are poor/dint have enough/worried about not being good enough etc...
• the child is made to feel bad about asking to have
• nit enough money is always the answer to ‘can I have this?’.

When dcs were little, there has been many times when dcs asked for something and I said NO because of finances. I never said that way. I talked about the difference between need and want. I talked about preserving the planet (esp with phones and iPads etc...).
And I always knew that there were times when I said YES just to show that it’s also ok to fulfill a want rather than a need. But you should really WANT it rather than being a fancy iyswim.

Basically, the issue isn’t with how much a child has or hasn’t but how you explain to that child why they are or aren’t getting something.

@VodkaSlimline that's a good idea. But I am not sure whether I would be able to draw a list of jobs that pay 150k to show to my kid. I definitely agree that it's a good idea to do so - though not sure how many kids get taught that if they dont go private

I grew up middle class in quite a poor area. I thought my family was super rich, in our four bedroom semi with a garden.

I remember going to London for the first time aged about 11. I remember being dumbfounded (and star struck) at the wealth around me. Looking at the houses on the bus ride through Kensington, seeing the Harrods price tags, the glamorous restaurants, theatres and hotels, and people dressed up “like in films”.
I remember quizzing my parents on how much money we had compared to people in London and why we didn’t have more (cringe).
The world had become a bigger place for me. Was a few more years before I started to learn about politics and became a proud socialist

people are happier if they're financially at the top of their peer group than the bottom, regardless of status compared to total population - so if none of your friends have a car and you have an old banger then your perception of your own status and wellbeing is greater than the person with a brand new Tesla whose friends all drive Ferraris. This also explains why the "children are starving in Africa so be grateful" thing doesn't work

This.

Compared to her friends she is poor. Telling her she isnt is going to help her sense of reality. Telling her this is what real poverty looks like isnt going to change the fact she feels poor.

The fact is 90k is a good salary. But it feels poor to her because of the value choices you have made. You have chosen to live where you live (work schools etc) and therefore you have made compromises (house size). That's based on your value choices. Other people will make different value choices, but everyone, no matter the income makes them. Because other people have or make other value choices it doesn't negate your own or vice versa. Everyone has different goals

So Own those decisions. Talk about the choices with her. Talk about those goals and compromises

But recognise that your choices and your values have an impact on her and it isnt always the one you want. You may feel one way about them, she might not agree. She might actually have valid reasons that change your own thinking or way of living. She might not. But I think understanding why parents make the choices they do can be valuable.

And this problem has existed since time immemorial. Having gone both private and state school way before social media, I had this problem. If your "income" and value choices are out of sync with your peers you will always feel like the outsider.

I don't think she's being a spoilt brat, she's simply seeing what she has compared to others and coming up with a conclusion. A conclusion that is somewhat off, but still her observation.

It's comparison. I had a friend from Hong Kong when I was at secondary. She told me that they'd got an amazing new flat because her dad had a new job, so they could afford it. It was huge and really low down in the block. It was only floor 42-wasn't that amazing! And the "huge" flat was that they now had a separate bedroom for her and her sister to share rather than having curtains across the single bedroom to split it between them and her parents.
When she saw our fairly standard 3-bed house, she was absolutely speechless! But it was fairly basic as far as UK housing went, nice side of average, but certainly not exceptional.

It can also be perception on what you say. I said on a couple of things when the dc were little "oh we can't afford that." DD1 then told people we were really really poor. We had to be careful, but definitely weren't really poor. And in a more complicated way, it wasn't so much as we couldn't afford it, so much as we chose not to spend our money on it. That's a bit more complicated to explain to a 6yo!

Haven’t read the whole thread so apologies if I’ve missed something. OP, kids think the strangest things and can really only understand what they have experience of. When my DD was about 13 she asked me very seriously if we had money problems. When I asked her why did she think this she replied “because we have lots of Waitrose Essential tins of tomatoes in the cupboard”.
Also has she actually told you she thinks you are poor or are you making assumptions based on her friends circumstances?

I think children’s attitudes often reflect those shown by parents, even if parents aren’t even aware of their own attitude.

It could well be Op, that you actually feel ‘poor’ in some ways and this feeling has come across to your child and she’s taken it on board too. Yes, you know your income is good but you are disappointed by being in rented. Think if you have ever voiced this. If you have, your DD will have heard and taken the view onboard herself.

A good friend of mine feels poor. Her household have a good income and live in an expensive town. However, she feels poor. She feels her house is small (it isn’t particularly) and that the friends have bigger more expensive houses. She feels judged as they are not in professional jobs. She has a fairly poor upbringing and this is always with her. She compares herself constantly to others. Ever since I’ve known her, she has talked about the size of her house and the size if other people’s houses and holidays etc, all in front of her DC. Her DC all know the price of houses locally and the price of everything actually. She says they feel embarrassed by the size if their house and self conscious that others have more. I don’t know if they actually do, but if they do, I think it’s an attitude that has actually come from the parents and not the child independently.

I live in a. Similar size house, which I’m perfectly happy with. I don’t suffer from any sense of inferiority or worry that some other people have bigger houses or more money than myself and I’m a pretty confident person. My DC know that some people have bigger and smaller houses than us, but it’s not something that we’ve ever talked about on a regular way beyond it just being a fact that has come up very occasionally. They don’t seem to feel poor. They can go to the house of friends which might be much bigger than ours and it isn’t an issue for them at all.

So my point is Op, do you think that unconsciously you might have shown your DC you don’t feel as well off as others because you rent (your very first post has a strong sense of that) and it has come across to your child and impacted their attitdue? Just a thought.

Ragwort oh my god what is wrong with people! In Victorian times people paid to watch the ‘lunatics’ in asylums! Today we know those “lunatics” were simply people struggling with disabilities, learning disabilities and for some mental health problems and needed help not mocking! Are food banks today’s equivalent?! FGS!

Poor people, people whose lives have changed to the point they need financial help are still people! They still deserve to have their dignity and not be looked down on.

My nephew did a stint with a homeless charity for two weeks. Certainly opened his eyes and give him a short dose of reality.