Make your kid pay for a lost cell phone?

Should you require your kid to pay for something he or she has lost?

I ran this question by several parent friends and the answers ranged from “Absolutely!” to “I would never dream of it….” It was sparked by my son (who shall for now remain nameless to protect the not-always-innocent). He recently turned 11 and had his birthday wish granted: he received his own cell phone.

Depending on where you live or how you live, you may think that’s a) insanely young to get such technology or b) wonder what took me so long since the vast majority of his sixth grade class has had cell phones for years.

On Sunday night, after his final bit of weekend homework was done, he announced that he couldn’t find his cell phone. He feared that he’d left it at his group tennis class on Friday. Or perhaps on the van ride coming home. Or maybe at his best friend’s house Saturday after a sleepover. He was sorry and scared. And I was really worried too.

But it wasn’t so much about the lost gadget (although it was annoying). I was concerned about the fact that I had told my kids that if they lost their phones they would have to pay for them with their own money out of their savings. And now—faced with a threat of my own making—the idea of making my son plunder and pillage his piggy bank and spend his birthday cash from Grandma and Grandpa seemed a little…cruel. Aren’t we all allowed to make innocent mistakes? Especially at age 11?

What if he’d lost an iPod? Or misplaced a library book? A new sweater?

Where do we draw the financial line in the sand?

One friend said it depended on what was lost. “A cell phone is a necessity,” she reasoned. “I work full time and my son is taking a bus five miles to and from school each way. I want to be able to reach him in an emergency—or have him reach me.”

Another woman I admire, who is a teacher and mother of identical twin boys, pointed out that what matters most is the child’s attitude. “If the kid is totally blasé and acts as if losing a valuable or important item is no big deal, then introduce a pay scheme for the next loss.”

My friends’ input made me think twice. My son certainly wasn’t acting cavalier, in any way, about the missing phone. He was truly sorry: not so much about having to dig into his money jar (though he wasn’t thrilled about that), but for losing something he’d wanted for years. In fact, it was hard to say who felt worse: him or me. Was forcing him to pay up the best way to teach a lesson about financial responsibility?

Guilt set in and so I caved. I decided that, this time, I’d pay for the replacement. I thought he had to come up with a new system so that he didn’t make the same mistake twice. I even had a speech all planned out: Always keep your phone in the same place—in your backpack front pocket, perhaps—and put it there before bed. It would be firm and no one would even notice that I was completely backtracking….

As luck would have it, the next day my phone rang and the Caller ID said it was from my son’s cell phone. It was his friend. Turns out that he did in fact leave it at the sleepover. What a relief! Not for my kid (although he was overjoyed) but for me. Technically, I didn’t have to break my own rule. And unless he’s trolling Marketplace’s website, he still thinks I would have followed through….

What about you? How do you handle it when your child loses something? I’m curious to know.

• Oct 22, 2009 5:34 PM — Beth Kobliner
• 1 comments

• tags: financial futures, kids and money, replacing lost cell phone