Money Moral Dilemma: Is it fair to redistribute my kids' cash equally?

Robisere

mumps:

I'm not sure I understand, are you saying you DD and her partner don't take their child to see the other grandparents because they only gave her £5 and you gave her £2,500?

No you have not read it properly and I did not explain it well. They don't take her for a number of reasons. The £5 given confused our granddaughter, who does not understand why she was given it, as any money is usually saved for her. Both our kids and all 4 grandchildren understood this when young, they were taught that saving money for their future was more important than buying things. If they needed anything, they had to explain what they wanted and give reasons. This sounds ridiculously mean and Victorian, but in principle it worked. As they got older, they were given pocket money of course, but only if they carried out minor tasks, regular chores, and kept up their school work as well as they could. The result is one teenager studying 3 days a week and working part time, another working as a respected chef and a 22 year old with a very good job. The youngest is about to enter Grammar school this year. All of them are happy and well-adjusted, you only have to see our family "Do's" to know that.

The other grandparents really are horrible, they do not know how to speak to children and have always thrown money at them without giving any real love. Dd's partner absolutely dotes upon my missus, says she is the prper mum his own mother never was. He has a great relationship with myself and my son. I know we are lucky to be such a close family, but you know, the harder we worked at it, the luckier we got!

mumps

Robisere wrote: »

mumps:


No you have not read it properly and I did not explain it well. They don't take her for a number of reasons. The £5 given confused our granddaughter, who does not understand why she was given it, as any money is usually saved for her. Both our kids and all 4 grandchildren understood this when young, they were taught that saving money for their future was more important than buying things. If they needed anything, they had to explain what they wanted and give reasons. This sounds ridiculously mean and Victorian, but in principle it worked. As they got older, they were given pocket money of course, but only if they carried out minor tasks, regular chores, and kept up their school work as well as they could. The result is one teenager studying 3 days a week and working part time, another working as a respected chef and a 22 year old with a very good job. The youngest is about to enter Grammar school this year. All of them are happy and well-adjusted, you only have to see our family "Do's" to know that.

The other grandparents really are horrible, they do not know how to speak to children and have always thrown money at them without giving any real love. Dd's partner absolutely dotes upon my missus, says she is the prper mum his own mother never was. He has a great relationship with myself and my son. I know we are lucky to be such a close family, but you know, the harder we worked at it, the luckier we got!

Okay, it didn't sound quite like that in the original post.

All families do things differently, my children were allowed to make decisions about money they were given as we always believed that they had to learn to make decision and realise there are consequences so we didn't make the decisions for them. At 11 they got accounts with ATM cards and school dinner money, bus fares, pocket money all got paid in and they had to manage. If they spent the months money on a computer game on the 1st of the month then they had no spending money for the month, had to walk to school and had to make their own lunches with whatever was in the fridge, nothing bought specially. It seems to have taught them to manage their money, the youngest is just deciding how to do his Masters, keep on with his current job and do it over two years or use his savings and get it done in one. The other 3 all have post grad qualifications they have funded from their savings.

missbiggles1

rachy182 wrote: »

Why would you give a relative of under 16 a gift of a different value to a sibling? In my family godparents are mostly family but have never got special treatment and if family friends have been chosen then they are close enough that they still give to all equally.
I dont have any kids but if a gran had given one of my kids loads of money while leaaving another out then there would be hell. Favouring one child so blatently over the other is just going to cause trouble. Its different when they get older and you might gift based on how much effort they put into the relationship.

I have never heard of godparents giving presents to the siblings of their godchildren - it negates the individual relationship that one hopes exists between them.

Jagraf

If my daughter wanted to go on a school trip and I couldn't afford it, I would ask her to pay for it if she had the money. Then I would use the money I would have paid for the trip on food. So the act is different but the result us the same in theory - she's buying the food.

Luckily I don't need to do that but if I had to, I would.

missbiggles1

Jagraf wrote: »

If my daughter wanted to go on a school trip and I couldn't afford it, I would ask her to pay for it if she had the money. Then I would use the money I would have paid for the trip on food. So the act is different but the result us the same in theory - she's buying the food.

Luckily I don't need to do that but if I had to, I would.

So you had the money for the food all along?

theoretica

I find this thread interesting how different families are from each other. The concept of a savings account that is untouched until the kid is grown up hasn't really come up in my family. Parents with a young kid are earning less than they probably will be later in life, relatives like to see their gifts used and we tend to believe a great childhood and childhood experiences (especially educational) will reap better dividends than money in the bank.

wildthing01

This is bamboozling me I'm afraid! The culture I (and my kids) have grown up in is that children are treated equally- the concept that one child might be given more money/a higher value gift than their sibling, by the same family member, is unthinkable in my family.

Cousins of course might be given different amounts by different aunts/uncles depending on how close they are to that branch of the family, but for two siblings who live in the same house and have the same two parents to be given different amounts by, say their granny, seems very strange to me. It would be like me giving my children different amounts. In our extended family even the step-children are given the same as the 'blood relative' children.

Of course if one child has been alive longer and so has accumulated more over their lifetime, that's different, but I can't imagine giving one of my nieces one amount and her sister a different amount, that would feel very wrong to me.

As to the dilemma though, despite the above, I would have to say, no you can't re-distribute it - the giver has their own reasons for giving those different amounts (no matter how strange/ inappropriate you may consider those reasons) and it's not for you to make that decision.

I'd just make sure the children knew that they were equally loved by their parents, and that they should not put too much store in gifts/money or of other people's treatment of them as a measure of their 'value' or worth as people.

missbiggles1

theoretica wrote: »

I find this thread interesting how different families are from each other. The concept of a savings account that is untouched until the kid is grown up hasn't really come up in my family. Parents with a young kid are earning less than they probably will be later in life, relatives like to see their gifts used and we tend to believe a great childhood and childhood experiences (especially educational) will reap better dividends than money in the bank.

In many families, relatives (especially grandparents) give money to the parents for their children's education - that's totally different from giving money to the children themselves. It isn't even that the money's kept until the child is grown up but that it's the child's own money that they might choose to spend on what they want, when they want it.

duchy

Jagraf wrote: »

If my daughter wanted to go on a school trip and I couldn't afford it, I would ask her to pay for it if she had the money. Then I would use the money I would have paid for the trip on food. So the act is different but the result us the same in theory - she's buying the food.

Luckily I don't need to do that but if I had to, I would.

But if your daughter's sister wanted to go on a school trip but because you had chosen less generous Godparents for her didn't have the same savings.....would you expect daughter 1 (with the savings) to give up her nest egg for her sister's school trip ?

buzzard

one of my young relatives is disgustingly spoilt by his family while his sister is not. I treated them roughly equally as children while complaining to their parents about the blatant favouritism. Now they are adults I only give anything to the girl. Spoilt brat boy is unemployed on benefit with his mother topping up his rent. I tried to intervene when one of his children was being maltreated, social services eventually became involved when the child was taken to hospital.

If relatives are treating your children unequally perhaps it's because they are trying to make up for what they perceive as your unequal treatment.