WHERE WILL OUR CHILDREN PLACE THEIR LEMONADE STANDS?

This article got posted up on my timeline on Facebook: http://bzfd.it/1sOnsyX It’s about a 9 year old, Cory Nieves, who started a stand outside his house selling hot chocolate to help his mom raise money to buy a car. Since then, his food stand has expanded into a roaring trade selling cookies, with his recipe for what he calls “the perfect chocolate chip cookie”.

What an amazing story. In fact, there many Cories around. We have a segment in our Money Smarts syllabus that celebrate kids who “Do their own thing”. It must be wonderful to be in an environment where you have the room to be whatever you want, whichever way you want to stretch.

Stories like these often leave me wondering: how much of that kind of space do we give to our children?

Now, a lot of these children turned entrepreneurs do so because they had to. Yet very often I find myself marveling kids like Cory Nieves. They carry themselves with such confidence and self-assuredness that is all at the same time child-like and scarily adult. We don’t really have such stories in our part of the world. Maybe it’s the space we live in – the majority of us live in flats afterall, where will our children place their lemonade stalls? Or, maybe it’s that our children are just too busy– where will they ever find the time with all the enrichment lessons and homework and remedials?

I remember sometime last year when my children requested for an Xbox. I had told them that this is something they had to save up for by themselves and we went into a brainstorm together about how they will go about getting to the amount they need.

Over the next few days, it was planning, counting, charts, calculations, gasps (OH we do have quite a lot already in our savings!), sighs (oh, but its not enough, we still have a long way to go). I enjoyed every moment of it, watching it all from the sidelines. Then the children decided they have to sell muffins at our block to accelerate their savings. I thought that was a marvellous idea.

So bright and early we woke up, baked the muffins, packed them up and did up the signs (“8 delicious cupcakes for $6!”). We had agreed that I will just stand at a distance as an observer and they would do the talking. It was tough for them. People didn’t understand what they were doing at first and there were many that seemed really skeptical about the muffins. Most we approached cannot fathom that these were children trying to sell them something. From my corner, I saw them turning this way and that waiting for an adult to step in and take over. We went up and down the block, to the playground to the carparks. In the end, we sold it all. All $72 of them.

It was a wonderful wonderful experience. I don’t know if this adventure will stir up any entrepreneurial desires in either of my two rascals. Maybe it will never be the case. But to me, and possibly the kids without realizing it, was the precious lesson that you can influence and direct your actions to achieve a goal. And that there are more proactive ways to accumulate money other waiting passively for the next allowance. I think it is immensely powerful for a child to realize that they have the space to do things to realize their desires.

 Most important of all was this phrase that still rings loud when we first embarked on this adventure – Money doesn’t make money. You make money. So go think how you can make some.