My six year old son, The Fonz (so nicknamed because his middle name is Fonzarelli), recently started saying the word apparently. He uses it correctly in speech, but I assume its use adds a flavor he didn’t intend.
If I ask him if Ethan is his best friend he says, “Apparently he is.” In his answer, apparently hints at either sarcasm or a background story to give the answer more meaning. Maybe Ethan was telling other kids they were best friends, but The Fonz wasn’t ready to move so fast and felt Ethan was rushing the friendship.
I ask if he likes Chloe, a cute girl in his class. He answers, “Apparently I do,” making it sound like he has no choice in the matter, as though she handed him a note that read, ‘Luke loves Chloe,’ and he accepted the assignment with a shrug.
I asked him if he and Ethan would evenly split the profits from a table store they set up on the street, and he said, “Apparently we will,” as though he were still bitter about Ethan asking to re-negotiate the 100/0 split he had previously accepted.
A 100/0 split proposal by The Fonz would not surprise me, not because he’s a bad friend—although he probably is but for different reasons which I won’t cover here—but because he doesn’t understand the value of money and would make a terrible businessman. Just this week he set up the table store outside our house to sell a selection of groceries from our kitchen unbeknownst to me. The highest sellers were apples, seven of which he sold for the total price I paid for one.
The experience reminded me I needed to do more to teach him the value of money, working hard, and saving for the future.
It also reminded me to always distrust my neighbors because one of them bought all our groceries way below cost, knowing they were ripping off a six year old. I’ve been going through all their trash cans at night looking for apple cores, but so far no evidence, or rather, no evidence of this crime, but I’ve found plenty of incriminating stuff to present the next time someone crosses me.
I’ve established The Fonz only knows two things about money:
1. He knows he wants it
2. He knows he wants a lot.
How much is a lot?
1. A lot of money is one million dollars.
2. A little bit is everything below that.
My kids have an excuse for their monetary confusion because we’re Americans living abroad in China and every day is full of questions like:
The Fonz: Dad, I want to earn some money. If I clean the fondue fountain will you give me twenty yuan?
Me: Which fondue fountain? Chocolate or cheese?
The Fonz: Mom said she would give me five dollars to clean the cheese fountain, but I’ll do the chocolate one for twenty yuan.
Me: You should have said yes to Mom because five dollars is more than twenty yuan. Remember twenty yuan converts to only three dollars, which is less than five dollars.
The Fonz: (sigh) I only want to know how much money I need so I can buy soda.
Me: With twenty yuan you can buy about eight sodas.
The Fonz: How much soda can I buy with five dollars?
Me: Well, you can’t use dollars in China , but in America five dollars would buy you five sodas. I know that’s fewer sodas than you could buy with twenty yuan, but the difference in soda prices is the result of other factors like the World Trade Organization and Coke selling at cost until the Chinese develop a taste for soda, and regional sugar prices, and tariffs, and–
The Fonz: Can I get paid twenty yuan for listening to this?
With no ability to comprehend why prices are so relative, it won’t be long before they ask themselves philosophical questions about why goods should cost anything at all and they’ll resort to stealing the soda if earning money to buy it always requires a speech from Dad.
Gifts from Santa create even bigger philosophical, economic questions and might explain why our sons don’t hesitate to send letters to Santa with a list of electronics worth thousands of dollars.
Me: Let’s start with the cheapest gift you asked for. An iPhone costs six thousand yuan. Also, you’re too young to have a phone. Also, you only have one friend. Also, that friend lives next door. I don’t think you need a six thousand yuan phone to call him.
The Fonz: But I’ve seen iPhones on the street for five hundred yuan.
Me: Those are just cheap copies sold on the street. They’ll break in two weeks. A real one costs six thousand yuan, which is like one thousand dollars.
The Fonz: So it would cost me one thousand to buy an iPhone in America .
Me: No, it would cost about two hundred.
The Fonz: Why?
Me: Because Apple charges what people will pay, and the Chinese are willing to spend a lot more on iPhones than Americans.
The Fonz: Sounds like Santa should buy my iPhone in America.
Me: He can’t.
The Fonz: Why?
Me: Santa has a regional distribution agreement with Steve Jobs.
The Fonz: What?
Me: Nothing. World Trade Organization. Tariffs. Markets. Exchange rates. Go to bed.
The Fonz: But it’s only nine AM.
Me: But if you convert it to US time, it’s nine PM Eastern. See ya tomorrow, sport!
The Good Greatsby 
Renee Davies
March 19, 2011
Ha ha…great dialogue between father and son. Clever.
spilledinkguy
March 20, 2011
I took three economics classes in college, yet all I can remember is…
something… and demand. Er… whatever.
That and the phrase, ‘ceteris paribus’… which I abuse the heck out of hoping it will seem as though I actually learned something. Which I apparently did not.
marryin'thelibrarian
March 21, 2011
Sounds like you’ve been applying the vocab advise to “How to Teach Your Kids to Sound Smart.” (Insert clever usage of ceteris paribus here.)
modesty press
March 20, 2011
My daughter and daughter out of law (don’t ask) and I have gone through similar educational efforts and conversations with our granddaughter (now seven years old).
When I took her to the zoo when she was four years old, she first asked, “Grandpa, how does a baby get out of a mommie’s tummy,” [after viewing some baby animals], after some stuttering I said, “I think this is a question you should discuss with your mommies.”
I bought her a snack, and let her pay for herself and bring the change to me. Later she dragged me into the zoo store and demanded that I buy her a stuffed panda. I said, “No.”
She said, “But I really want it.”
I said, “No.”
She said, “But I really want it. And you still have money inside your wallet. I saw.”
I said, “No. I spent all the money on you I am going to spend today. Besides you have lots of stuffed animals you don’t play with now.”
She said, “But I really want it. When I get home I will take my nap if you buy me a panda.”
I said, “You should take a nap when you get home because you are four years old and you need a nap, not because you bribe me or because I bribe you. It’s just the right thing to do. Anyway [I continued in the irritating way adults do when talking to children] do you really think a stuffed panda will make you happy? [Substitute fur coat, diamond ring, Corvette, marriage license, liason, or whatever.]
Being four years old, she forgot on the way home that she wasn’t talking to me, but did try threats. “When I get home I will tell Mama [my daughter and co-mom with Mommy, daughter out of law and birth mother] that you would not buy me a panda.”
After we got to her home, she demanded the phone and with a little help from me with dialing called Mama at work. “Grandpa would not buy me a panda!” she narced on me.
Now she has an allowance. She gets $3 a week. $1 goes to spending (immediate gratification); $1 goes to charity (for all I know she has sent money to Japan to help with people who lost their homes to the earthquake and tsunami or to the Japanese nuclear agency to rebuild their damaged reactors); and $1 goes to saving. [I just donated $25 as her 7th birthday present to her to start her first credit union account, though by now she may already be a majority stockholder in Citibank for all I know].
Amazingly, she still speaks to me, as does Mama and Mommy. Not to mention her two “daddies” (sperm donor and his partner, who live in Chicago).
Hippie Cahier
March 20, 2011
Apparently, the Fonz is one of those language-oriented types. Hopefully, one of your other sons (Potsie, perhaps?) will excel in accounting and it will all work out.
girlonthecontrary
March 21, 2011
I need to start having children…they make for good blog fodder.
The Good Greatsby
March 21, 2011
Our number one reason for having kids was because we’d run out of new stories to tell.
nursemyra
March 21, 2011
that’s a very expensive reason 😉
fnkybee
March 21, 2011
My son is 8 now and I can remember when ‘apparently’ came into his vocabulary and now my daughter (6 next month) has started using it. It cracks me up when they start adding in the bigger words.
We are convinced our son will be a millionaire one day because when he learned about money, that’s all he wanted. He asked B if they could plant apple trees in the back yard so he could sell them and make a million dollars. He was 5. He saves and is weirdly aware of the cost of things. My daughter on the other hand gets money and it burns a whole in her pocket. She gets it honestly, from me.
Great conversation between you and your son!
Binky
March 22, 2011
I’d like to make a deal with the Fonz to buy all my groceries from him.
theultimatelaxbro
April 13, 2011
That’s pretty funny!! APPARENTLY he’s a pretty smart kid now-a-days, Eh?