【英语生活】如何让女儿不买糖果？

When my daughter reached the age of six, my wife and I decided to give her a small amount of pocket money. However, access to money of her own would allow her to buy herself large quantities of sweeties. So instead of giving her cash in hand we keep track of the money she's accumulated, which she can then use to purchase anything she wants so long as it's not food or drink.

This worked well, but for her eighth birthday a number of kind friends and relatives gave her cash. She now plans to keep this money as an ongoing sweeties budget while buying birthday presents from her saved pocket money to show her benefactors.

Short of confiscating her birthday money, is there any way we can hope to discourage this?

Outmanoeuvred parent

Dear Outmanoeuvred,

Your daughter has discovered that money is fungible. As they say in the aid industry, you may think your grant is funding your favourite project, but it's really funding the president's favourite project. Thus, you give money on condition that it is spent on an extra hospital, the recipient builds the hospital he was planning to build anyway, sends you the receipts and increases his expenditure on limousines and AK-47s. (Did he spend your money on the hospital or the limousines? The question is meaningless, and that's fungibility.)

Your plan worked only while your daughter had no access to outside sources of funding.

I can see three options. You rule out confiscation. The second is to offer incentives for low sweet consumption by increasing or reducing your daughter's pocket money. The trouble is that sweet consumption may be hard to monitor. The third is to admit defeat and let your daughter make her own choices. Sweets have costs and benefits, and your daughter appears to be a better economist than you are.

我的女儿年满6岁时，我妻子和我决定给她一些零花钱。但她自己拿到钱会去买很多糖果，所以我们不把现金交到她手里，而是记录下她积攒了多少钱，然后她可以用这些钱买自己想要的任何东西，除了食品或饮料。

这种方法非常有效，但为了庆祝她的8岁生日，许多亲朋好友给了她一些现金。现在她计划把这些钱作为买糖果的长期预算，同时用节省下来的零花钱购买生日礼物，展示给她的资助人。

除了没收她的生日礼金，还有什么方法能阻止她这么做吗？

遭受挫折的父母

亲爱的遭受挫折的父母：

你的女儿发现钱是可以互换的。正如援助行业的人们所言，你可能认为自己的捐款为你喜爱的项目提供了资助，但它实际上资助了会长喜爱的项目。所以说，你捐钱的条件是用这些钱再造一所医院，于是受助人建造了他原本就计划建造的医院，给你送去了收据，同时增加了自己在豪华轿车和AK-47冲锋枪的支出（他把你的钱用在了医院还是豪华轿车上？这个问题毫无意义，这就是可替代性）。

只有当你的女儿没有外部资金来源时，你的计划才会奏效。

我觉得有三种选择。你排除了没收这种选择。第二种选择是通过增加或减少你女儿的零花钱，来鼓励她减少糖果消费。这种办法的麻烦在于糖果消费可能很难监控。第三种是承认失败，让你女儿自己选择。糖果有成本也有收益，与你相比，你的女儿似乎是一位更好的经济学家。

译者/君悦