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STEM PARENTING
How I Taught My Daughter Her First Lesson on Gambling and Finances
A lesson I’ll keep emphasizing to help her make good decisions on how to spend her money.
My wife and I took our daughter to a bingo game the other day. “I hope we win,” she said with a lot of enthusiasm.
“Sorry, kiddo, but odds are we won’t.”
“Come on, daddy. Be more positive.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I hope we win too. And we’ll have fun playing. But we’re very, very likely to not win.” At this point, I wondered if I would take away all the fun by being so honest.
“What daddy is saying is that we shouldn’t be disappointed if we don’t win, but still enjoy the game.” Gotta love my wife for always saving me.
The game was electronic bingo. We were given printed sheets of paper with a serial number at the center, where the “free number” is. As different ball and number combinations were called out via a computer read by the host, our daughter dabbed a bit of ink of the corresponding number. She did well in keeping up with the letter-number combinations called.
After three games, we did not win anything. Three other people won each one of the games. When they won, an…