Here’s a tip for getting rich slowly. Start with $200 and build it at 3% a day. By the end of the year you will have compounded it to $9.1m. How you build on that $200 @ 3% is the hard part but not that hard if you put your mind to it. Stock, shares, cash deposit, betting exchange etc

However, I never listened. In fact, until recently, I never showed the slightest bit of entrepreneurial spirit. I’m not sure what else my Dad could’ve done – I just wasn’t interested… probably because it was always presented as a way to make money, and I’ve never been motivated by money.

With my (future hypothetical) kids, I plan to encourage their entreprenurial spirit by not giving them an allowance – only allowing them to work for money, and teaching them about how it can be about more than just the money.

I thi

As for entrepreneurship, we’re getting there. For now, we offer our kids opportunities to do work in our entrepreneurial efforts for pay. They really haven’t seemed interested in selling anything, perhaps because DH and I hate selling things.

In turning that to the bake sale and the comments that came from it, I think the kids doing it on their own is the perfect example of your wisdom here. If the parent had been involved in the bake sale, the parent would have stepped in immediately once the issue about change was discovered, solved the issue for the children, and it likely would have slipped quickly from the child’s mind. I bet your kind questions to the girls stayed with them much longer for the very fact that the parent was not involved.

As a parent, it is really hard NOT to get involved, esp when you see your child making mistakes. In the bake sale, while the items were priced correctly, that again is another lesson for the girls. Pricing is one of the most difficult market decisions of all–it really depends on demand/taste of the consumer. Letting a child set the prices and seeing which sells and doesn’t sell teaches a lesson in and of itself–again, much more so if the child is not told how to price but sees it in action herself.

I think my favorite memory of childhood entrepreneurship was when I was 7 or 8. I tried to sell zip-lock bags full of dirt and styrofoam peanuts as homemade potting soil.

I can not remember if I sold any, and I don’t know if it is safe in any way to plant something in styrofoam laced dirt, but at least I had an interest in business from an early age!

Dan Hill
http://atomicblowfish.com

I was not an entrepreneur by any stretch of the imagination. I did do a lot of fund-raising as a kid.

The lesson you taught those girls is the same lesson I was taught when I was working a concession booth at our softball park. I don’t know how many times my mom tried to explain counting change to me, but it never clicked until I handed a 60-year-old man the wrong amount. He said, “Oh, darlin’ this isn’t right…”

He explained how to count change. He started with, “My food and drink costs $5.75 let’s try to get to an even dollar amount.” Then he stood back and let me work it out, encouraging me as I went.

Embarrassing? A little. A strong learning/teaching moment? You know it!

My biggest money maker back then was my sketches though. Many of my classmates (and even kids in younger grades) wanted to buy them. I believe I was selling them for a dollar a picture. Something of that nature. I even printed out little sheets of paper I passed around to everyone stating my prices.

I just needed to make sure teachers didn’t see me selling these things, as selling anything isn’t allowed in the private school I went to. But this article brings back good memories.

Christina

I am secretly envious of those people who have the drive and gumption to just give their own business a go. I think I am too afraid of failure!

I am very concerned about the comments saying “lay off them, kids learn at their own pace” or that the girls may have been special needs. Both are quite true, but both are terrible excuses for a 9-10 year old to not understand 5-1=4. If the girls had a learning disability, then their parents should have given them the tools they would need to succeed at the task (calculators, practice lessons, whatever). If they’re neurotypical, then saying they’re just “learning at their own pace” is a total cop-out and a real disservice to our youth.

Keep writing about stuff you “don’t have experience with” (though that interaction on Saturday, as short and brief as it was, DOES count as experience). I am tired of parents knocking around childless couples as if their taxes (which they voted for) don’t help pay for the same education, parks, and community services their kids receive. It was your duty as a member of the community to ensure she gave you correct change. Controversy and self-determination is what makes America great!

I do want to mention (not to defend JD or otherwise) that since JD does not have kids, he does have a different perspective. What he thought was funny, turned out to be offensive for some. He also does not have any dogs so that one post when he said “get rid of the dog” got bad reviews too. Myself being one of them as I have a dog.

I think the bottom line is we readers know that JD is not a mean person and he was just trying to turn this article into a lesson. I am not going to take this against him.

JD: Maybe you should think carefully when writing about kids, dogs, or other topics that you don’t have experience with.

This advice for kids is great. I don’t have kids yet either, but if they are showing entrepreneurial tendencies as they grow up I will most certainly encourage it. My desire to be an entrepreneur did not really start until I was out of college. I wonder if it would have been different had my parents encouraged it while I was growing up.

I don’t think you sounded like a jerk, and I don’t think you have anything to apologize for.

Actually, I think too many of us are too darn quick to take offense – and the internet gives this type too much power. But then, that’s probably a discussion for another day.

JD, you were a jerk.

It was your tone, and the title “Kids These Days”, saying as if ‘Jeez, when I was their age I solved quadratic equations with my left hand.’ All children grow at their own pace, despite what anyone else wants.

However, ahem, you are redeemed by your current article about your childhood experiences.

From time immemorial, elders have been saying “…the kinds these days…”. It will never end…

You weren’t some “random adult” either, and to “lecture” the parents would have been both completely counterproductive and a waste of your time.

The parents obviously didn’t – for whatever reason – adequately counsel their child about what was involved with running a bake sale. If you had gone up and said “your daughter doesn’t know how to make change” or “your daughter gave me the wrong change” it might have alerted them to the problem but it wouldn’t have taught the daughter anything.

Your approach may not have either; she may be a child with issues (although no one knows, not even those who apparently knee-jerked an assumption in the original post’s comments, which I have no intention of reading).

But at least your approach treated that child with respect: it was her business, and you expected, as her customer, for her to hold up her end of the deal.

If you engage in business, walking away with a bad deal isn’t “minding your own business” even if the other party is a child. It’s just teaching that child that being incompetent is acceptable.

Anyway. I hated having to sell things as a child. Never did it voluntarily. It was never something *I* would have wanted, and I couldn’t see why we should expect anyone else to buy it. Our schools had practically no budget, so we were always selling something. I’ll never know why the schools themselves couldn’t just have held a fundraiser.

Local parents wouldn’t have had to juggle all that crap for their own kids, wouldn’t have had to buy other crap from other kids, and would have been able to take an actual tax deduction for any support given to the school, instead of just spending money on crap.

I used to love it when I was a cashier and people would have their kids help with the math of the transaction. It didn’t happen very often.

What kinds of things are college kids selling? I can only think of when they stand in the middle of the street and ask for money for sports/similar. I hate that, and never donate.

On the other hand, I can’t think of anything kids around here do either. There aren’t that many between kindergarten and college in my close nieghborhood, though.