Wednesday, December 17, 2008

benefits (cont) - bailing out Lily

Another benefit of small town NZ is that when Lily gets into a pickle people know her and help out. This is shown by the happy ending to a most peculiar situation she got into by being too kind hearted.

She was out shopping with her friend who also has DS. This friend told Lily she had no money so Lily paid for lunch. She then told Lily she was poor but Lily was rich. (This is due mainly I think to her parents being a bit more sensible with money than us and not allowing the friend unlimited access to her invalid's benefit)

Lily felt so sorry for the poor family that she bought a playstation game for the friend's brother and another for the friends sister (people that Lily does not know) - a total of $130

To make matters worse Lily and her friend (who had of course chosen games that they quite liked too) decided they should try the games out just to be sure they worked!

Paul and I got told this story when we got back from San Francisco (along with the one about Lily being missing one day as she'd gone to watch High School Musical 3 again, totally by herself) We spent some time trying to explain to Lily that you don't usually buy presents for people you don't know, that the family isn't really poor, that $130 is a lot of money etc etc None of this really made sense to Lily - after all she was just being kind. (I know a similar story about a friend of mine who's teenage son with DS bought her a $500 necklace last Christmas - but I digress)

Last night Lily's friend's mum phoned. Luckily Lily had bought the games from a shop managed by a man we both know who is father to a daughter with a chromosome disorder. He has agreed to give Lily a full refund!

So at the moment we're not letting Lily have access to her bank card when she goes out with this particular friend and Lily is supposed to talk to us before buying anything. But does anyone have any idea how we can help her understand why her behaviour wasn't appropriate?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

When you figure it out please let me know. At school we have "camp stalls" (mini galas) to raise money for camp. Found out last term that Hayley had been partnered with a buddy (our neighbour) who took all her money on most of the occasions because she didn't have any. One side of me is sad for our neighbour (they are low income) but the other side of me is more sad for Hayley and her being ripped off. Next year I'm gonna request a different helper. I think Lily's friends parents should be talking to their daughter and making her understand she can't take money from Lily. It's a hard one our kids don't have a great understanding of the value of money and they are so eagar to be generous and make people happy.