Kids clean up in a billion-dollar industry [SMH]: AUSTRALIAN parents are spending more than $1 billion on pocket money a year but children are expected to do far less around the house in return … experts say [chores] are important in developing life skills

This story illustrates the problems when parents don’t consider the philosophy of pocket money. Take the time to think and discuss your own philosophy to handing over the cash.

Curiously in the week following that article, I had two encounters with my son to do with performing housework. The first was early in the week – after a couple of loads of laundry had been done, the clean clothes were piling up on the lounge-room’s couch. Awaiting sorting and packing away by the owners. A few tense words of suggestion were aimed at Mr 12, encouraging him to do his part. The reply? A great big sigh. Fairly typical of a proto-teenager perhaps, but it didn’t go down very well as you can imagine!

The second was a far more positive interaction. Later in the week my wife was due out at band practice, but had lost track of the time. As I arrived home, she was heading out the door having put some rice on to cook for dinner. Here’s where the fun begins : I took this as a chance to get the kids helping out in the kitchen. Quickly enough we began to pull ingredients out to see what we could make. Directing traffic, I involved both Mr 12 and Miss 9 in washing, peeling, chopping and preparing bits and pieces. The whole operation took around 20 minutes, producing an acceptable fried rice dish with bacon, chilli chipolatas, snow peas, corn, carrots and so on.

What really made my night was, after dinner, Mr 12 spontaneously said “that was really fun, when we were cooking!”

My point? Sure, pitching in with the household chores isn’t always fun, but when you get a chance to make it a communal activity it really can turn a dull chore into an opportunity for family fun (and a little bonding to boot!)

Sometime in the next week create an opportunity to involve the kids in a household chore. You may even all enjoy it.

As we talked briefly about developing my blog, the conversation turned to how (let’s call him ‘Barry’) Barry used to earn money as a kid. He spoke of interminable summers of being dragged along to regional test cricket games (which take, literally, days) – which gave Barry a healthy dislike for all things cricket.

To get away from the very slow pace of test cricket, Barry and his mates would catch snakes for Eric Worrell. They would get paid twenty dollars for each snake, but only ten dollars for the non-venomous ones!

My jaw just about hit the table when I heard Barry talk about this. So it made me wonder – what is the craziest way you ever earned money as a kid?