Elaborating on the kids, WDW, and money thread....

[**pixiedust**]

My six year old is old enough to understand about having a certain amount of money to spend at WDW for souvenirs. He has birthday Disney dollars and money he has earned to take with him for what he wants to buy. However, I don't think that my 3 1/2 year old has the same ability to reason this out. How should I handle her souvenirs so that it is fair to her and her brother? I don't want him to think that we are just buying her what she wants and not him, and I don't want her to think that he may get more or less because he has to spend his own money. Does that make sense? I never had this issue because they were both younger when we went, and we just bought them what we thought was appropriate. Any advice?

 

[Now Mom of 3]

I have 3 kids ranging in age from 2 to 10. My older kids are old enough to get it when I explain that the "rules" are different for the little one than for them. I do not go overboard trying to make everything perfectly equal for each of my kids. That being said, I think 3.5 is definately old enough to understand that there are limits. It just needs to be put in simpler terms. While your older child can understand how much money he has total as can understand if he buys this item then he will have this much left. I would make it simple for your daughter buy just using numbers of items. For example she could be allowed one large item and 2 small items. When she shows interest in something you would let her know if it was a big or small item and how many more she had left. Hope that makes sense.

On our last trip the older 2 had $ amount limits and I just kept an estimate on my head for the 2 yr. old so I could let him know how many more items he could pick. The older ones did not seem to be bothered by that arrangement or by the fact that they were providing much of their money from allowances and we provided his since he does not get an allowance yet.

 

[jenndisney]

How well do your kids work together? The six year old may enjoy helping the younger one understand. Just a thought, but it would only work with certain kids.

Have a great trip!

 

[Harvestmooner]

We were at WDW in January with a 9 1/2 daughter and a 3 1/2 year old son. They both had their own money(from birthdays, gifts and earned). Each day before we left the hotel for the parks they would get their wallets out and then we would decide how much money they could take for the day. It depended on how many days we had left in the park and if they had made a big purchase the day before.
Of course my daughter wanted everything-and my son, being younger, would only ask once in a while for something. I know with a couple of things we actually suggested to him-"wouldn't you like to buy that ."
This system worked great for us. My son actually came home with $32-left over. My daughter however only had $1.58.

 

[disneymom3]

Just returned from a trip in Feb with three kids 4, 5 and 9. The 9 yo went with more money than the younger two--she gets a bigger allowance and does Kidzeyes--but she also came home with money. I gave each of them some Disney dollars and then kept all of their money in their DD envelopes. I told them they had a certain amount to spend and would tell the 4 yo if he had enough for something or not. (He is barely 4 btw) It worked out fine. He got a Zurg toy and that is all he really wanted. Then in addition to that, we bought everyone two items--glow toys and one other thing that I have forgotten.

Really the whole shopping for souvies thing was such a pain, I want to come up with a new system for our next trip. That is a couple of years off though so I am sure the dynamics will be totally different.

 

[zookeeper]

I was surprised when we went how good my 3 yr old was about buying souvenirs. We had agreed before we left that we would buy everyone's mickey ears, but the rest was up to them. They had all saved up for a while and so they had enough to buy a couple of things each. My 3 yr old spent all of his money by day 2, but he never asked for another thing after that. It was totally unexpected. Maybe because it was our first trip we were lucky in that he was so excited about everything else he didn't get as caught up in buying souvenirs as he might normally get. Whatever the reason I'm thankful we got off easy!!!