Got the Gimmies

Sean has a serious case of the Gimmies. 

It's time to pull out the Berenstain Bears book.  If you are not familiar with these books, I highly recommend them.  We have several.  I have picked most of them up at garage sales for about a quarter. 

Sean wants an mp3 player.   He doesn't care that Callie was about 12 before she got one and he's only half-way there.  At Walmart the other day, he wanted to "look" at mp3 players.  I thought this would be a good lesson (so he could see just how much they cost).  As I suspected, he was in sticker shock with the $100 mp3 players.  But then he saw some for around $30 or $40 and started to see light at the end of his tunnel.  We kept walking through electronics and I showed him the Nintendo DS games and I said that by Christmas time, he might prefer one of those to an mp3 player.  He then decided he didn't want to wait until Christmas, he wants one now... how much?  Around $130 I said.  WHAT?????   And that's just the system, you still have to buy the games to go in it. 

I suggested that he could save up money and buy what he wants.  That got his wheels spinning.  When we got home, he decided to hit Daddy up for some money for the time he helped strip wallpaper two weeks ago.  $20 should be good or so he thought.  We are trying to help him understand that when he volunteers to do something, he is not supposed to expect to get paid.  Today he asked me several times if there was a job he could do. 

I told him that I have an mp3 player that he can listen to sometime.  I never should have told him that unless I had planned to find it and charge it immediately.  He does not forget anything.