He mentioned that there "likely" wouldn't be any consequences if the child fails to pay rent.
Nothing in life can be done without money, so it is very important to understand its importance. However, how young is too young to learn about the values of making money? Recently, a dad took to Reddit to talk about how he was thinking of teaching his eight-year-old stepson what it means to be responsible with money, and his idea was to charge him rent.
"I really don’t think I’m the AH but hear me out," he started the post. "He gets an allowance every week. This is for helping with the dishes, clean up your room with help, and be tidy. Nothing crazy. His allowance is $25. So $100 a month. However, I want to charge the boy $20 a month for living expenses. Leaving him $80. His mother thinks there’s something wrong with that and he’s young, so his money should be his."
"My intention is to teach him about money management as that’s something that’s very important to me," he added. However, he mentioned that there "likely" wouldn't be any consequences if he can't pay rent.
Almost immediately, people pounced on him for his parenting techniques, saying that the boy was way too young to be worrying about something as grave as rent.
One user said this was a bad idea because of the emotional trauma that he would experience. "It is trauma to be 8 years old and feel like your parents are not providing for you, that you are a burden to them and need to pay for your place in their lives/home. His home should be his safe place. Money management is important but this is not the way to go about it," they wrote.
"It's terribly stressful when you are an adult. Can you imagine thinking at 8 you have to pay in order to live in your family's house?" added another person.
In time, the father provided an update, saying that he had taken all the comments into consideration and come to a decision that his idea wasn't really the best.
“You all are correct in that I didn’t think of the implications of taking from my son and the emotional damage that could cause, or anxiety within him. That’s the last thing I want,” OP wrote.
“I hope all the parents here can learn from the comments. Because truthfully, I feel like we’re all just winging raising children, and nobody knows for sure what's in their best interest sometimes. There’s more than one way to cook an egg, so to speak. All we can do is learn from each other and our experiences.”
References:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/wl3b55/aita_for_charging_an_8_year_old_rent/
Getty Images | Peter Dazeley
