Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy does parenting a PG child have to be expensive?

I can't believe the amount of money we are spending lately. Extra classes, enrichment, various educational materials. We are super lucky that we have an outstanding used bookstore near us. We pay no more than $.20 a book. But other than that, it all seems very expensive. Am I missing something here? Is there a much cheaper way to parent a PG child?

We do lots of outside stuff, fishing, beach combing, exploring the tundra, lots of library time, kindle....but we don't have any stores so anything I buy we have to order and ship in so that limits us. There are no classes or enrichment opportunities for that we could spend money on here, so I have to say that I guess that isn't a necessity for a pg child as dd is quite happy with the opportunities she has....(dissecting a ducks stomach that she got while hunting with dad or examining salmon hearts after fishing and comparing them to human hearts) I have found the best thing for a PG child is creativity, finding the experience in the everyday. Learn all about the local plants and there medicinal purposes (only takes a book on local flora and fauna from the library, an indepth study of the local environment, a few phone calls to different places (here we have done field trips one on one with fish processors, trawlers, and a coast gaurd cutter, and I am aiming for the water treatment plant next year and hooking dd up with a mentor from the local clinic.) all things that are free but great extras for a pg kid. Hope that helps.

Have the local public school do it's purported job?

HAHAHAaHAHAHA. I kill me.

Amazedmom, really you need to factor in the cost of your time. It's costing you whatever you'd be earning if you could ship your daughter off to a free school. But I do agree with you on finding interesting stuff around you.

What Tallulah said. All of it.

Meh. We are caught in a catch-22 with this stuff. If I work, we can afford more enrichment. But if I work, then DD needs that much more enrichment and there's no full-time parent to scaffold executive skills and hothouse the bald patches....

plus, there's no way that the local school could deal with DD's first exceptionality, never mind the second.

Ergo, here we are.

It's not perfect, and my DD would have a lot of things that she doesn't if we were more affluent, I suppose.

But finding cheap and low-cost things has become something of a game for me over the years. There is a LOT out there if you look.

Based on the opportunity cost of being a SAHM, I should probably have DS19mo's brain insured. I'm not kidding.

This tickled me.

LOL....I love the school doing it's job comment.

And you know, I hadn't really thought about the time factor, but yes, factor that in and we are down a ton

This is just what we were talking about as DD was begging for Shakespeare books and the library has mostly the plays kids read in high school in the fun forms--illustrated, manga, etc. so I've culled through and found the few on some comedies they have and I'm NOT buying all the others on amazon I've found until we see how good or bad the library books are. And I also want the Michael Clay Thompson Island curriculum for her :p It's tough! Hopefully she'll get a full college ride like her folks and make up for some I'd it if we had more moola I'd invest in a language tutor while she's this age, because she excelles at languages and I'm not at all fluent enough to teach her any besides English.

We're a one income family by choice, and we want to spend as much time with our children as we can, so we don't consider the opportunity cost of not working. Apart from that, the cost educating our children is essentially zero.

Different folks may define "expensive" in different ways, but I don't think that parenting a young child should be expensive. I think that most of the folks in this discussion (except HK) have young kids.

Almost all children cost you more once they reach middle school age. Those expenses can include academics, sports, music, etc. Maybe we should say no to some of the activities as it takes a toll on the bank account, but the kids benefit from the various activities in a number of ways.

Kids can be expensive, but I think you can find plenty of free or low cost resources for young kids. Online stuff, the library, local university programs open to the public, school subsidized summer programs, etc. - we have done all of these with our kids and they enjoyed them. You will need to search around a bit though, as the free or low cost programs don't have the marketing that the costly ones have. Good luck.