CHAPTER 9

CHILD’S PLAY: BARTER FOR KIDS

Barter is such a simple skill that it shouldn’t be left only to adults. Why should they have all the fun? Let’s get the kids in on the action. Children naturally want to barter all the time. In the lunchroom, one kid will trade her Oreos for another’s Twinkies. Boys have traded baseball cards, marbles, and comic books for ages. Teenage girls will swap dresses, jeans, jewelry, and other articles of clothing to broaden their wardrobe and get a quick new look for free. Smaller kids will swap toys for a week or two, just ... because.

When children trade, they develop a sense that they have power to earn their way in the world beyond what Mom and Dad give them for allowance or what they are paid at their after-school job. Barter broadens their perception of how to navigate the world of personal and professional commerce. It also teaches them how to negotiate, play fair, value a good or service, make new friends, determine what they really want, delay gratification, and forge relationships so that everyone wins. It can even teach them the basics of entrepreneurship and how to start a small business.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Since children are natural traders, there are some excellent strategies you can employ to encourage their barter habits so they will carry those great skills into adulthood. Instead of having them jump in unfettered, you need to establish some ground rules.

First and foremost, teach children that barter is about the fair exchange of goods and services. Direct trades are often unbalanced, but when that happens between willing adults, no one can complain. After all, each participant understood the rules of the game going in and negotiated for the best deal possible. But if an older kid takes advantage of a younger child’s naïveté by getting more than he or she gives, that teaches sneakiness, reinforces greed, and will eventually engender hard feelings in the younger child and his or her parents. The simplest way to teach fair trade is to invoke the Golden Rule, even if you aren’t the religious sort. When you treat people the way you want to be treated, no one gets hurt, and everyone wins. Simple. Direct. Fair. Barter, even more so than in the cash world, relies on honor and fair dealing because relationships are formed in the act of trading. Besides, who wants to keep trading with someone who is an opportunist or a cheater?

Supervise your child’s first trades to make sure he or she has got the hang of it. That’s especially important if they’ve never seen you trade before and if they are under the age of twelve, when barter with rules will be completely new (and, we hope, exciting) to them. Ideally, young children will trade within the family first. Then they can branch out with friends at school, with neighbors, and then with others they already know. Teenagers can try out trading with strangers via Web sites like CraigsList, bulletin boards, or even flea markets. But it’s wise for a parent to track trades with strangers because, let’s face it, the world can be a dangerous place. If your offspring are posting trade ads on the Internet, bulletin boards, or other public venues, make sure they don’t list your physical address—just a cell phone or an e-mail address that can be monitored by an adult. Also, check the rules of Web sites they want to trade on. Most barter sites don’t allow trading for anyone under the age of eighteen.

Set clear guidelines on what your kids can trade. If Emily detests going to ballet lessons and trades away her ballet shoes and leotards for a monster bag of candy, you’re not going to be overjoyed if you intended for her to keep up with her pliés. One helpful rule of thumb is to allow kids to trade what they have purchased with their own money and for their own use. For anything else, they have to ask Mom or Dad first. That means they can’t trade away the puce sweater from Aunt Erma, their brother’s turtle, the cookies Mom just baked, or Dad’s golf clubs, unless you give them the green light.

Before older kids begin trading, or if they have an offer from someone else, they should have an idea of the value of that item other than “Hey Mom, I really, really want this.” Encourage them to do a quick check of Web sites such as eBay and CraigsList or retailers like Kmart or Amazon.com to find out what other people are asking for similar items. They need to take into account the condition of the item or their ability to perform the work before they trade. Ask them to figure out what a new item in mint condition is worth. Then try to calculate what their item (or their partner’s offering) is worth, considering its condition.

If they are trading Rollerblades that are scuffed, dirty, and heavily used—in other words, fair condition—what are the skates worth compared with brand-new skates? This is an excellent opportunity for them to learn about real-life economics. It’s the type of lesson that will stay with them forever and will carry over in later life, such as when they are haggling for a car or a home. They will also learn to be more careful consumers. Instead of just grabbing an item without asking questions, they’ll learn to examine it more carefully, look for any flaws or issues that could affect its use, and see if it’s really worth the asking price. We don’t want to teach kids to be jaded, especially at a young age, but we do want them to be savvy consumers and good, but fair, negotiators.

Before your child seals a deal, make sure you have final approval. The same should apply if the deal is with another child. That child’s parent or guardian should be able to say yea or nay to the trade so you don’t wind up with unhappy parents whose child traded away the brand-new math flash cards they just bought. If your child is trading with an adult whom you know and trust, then there’s less need to oversee the transaction. Either way, let your son or daughter know that if you don’t approve of the deal, it can’t transpire, or, if it already has, the trade will have to be undone.

Encourage your kids to track their trades in a journal or on the computer so they can see how successful they have been. Tracking can be a big self-esteem builder. We have a tendency not to acknowledge our accomplishments. Often those around us fail to recognize them as well. But as your children barter again and again, negotiating one successful trade after another, they will realize that they can negotiate and make deals happen. They will begin to appreciate their capacity to make a deal. If they record the estimated dollar value of each trade, they will see the increasing power of their ability to provide for themselves or at least to acquire extras that they want. They can develop a sense of pride at their growing list of transactions.

This is especially true if they are trading their labor or knowledge (rather than stuff). When children trade the work of their hands (such as yard care), their skills (such as playing guitar), or knowledge (such as surfing lessons), they discover that they have worth far beyond just what they own. They begin to equate power in their world with what they can do and how creative they can be, and they will learn that there are more ways to obtain what they want and need than simply by using the almighty dollar.

They will also develop a sense of sharing and community, especially among their friends and family members. Encourage them to share tasks—in particular, the ones they don’t care for—with their friends or siblings in exchange for helping with the friends’ or siblings’ chores. For example, if your son is expected to rake the deluge of fall leaves from the yard, and he is less than enthusiastic, suggest that he get help from a buddy to do the job in exchange for raking the buddy’s yard as well. In other cases, the kids can trade jobs they dislike for a less-distasteful job that their brother or sister would be happy to exchange. If you allow children latitude with the chores they trade, you’ll probably get a more-cooperative youngster and participating family member.

To cut down on the amount of whining for new toys, one parent suggests joining a local individual exchange. When the kids start complaining that they’re bored with their existing toys and demand new ones, tell the little guys that they can list any of their old toys for trade with the exchange. They can then trade these toys for ones they do want, or, depending on the organization of the exchange, they can use the credit from the trade to barter for other toys. While this method may not cut down completely on the whining and boredom, it will at least begin teaching children how to barter and give them an option for obtaining what they want without pestering you for cash or a bigger allowance.

As they start to grasp what bartering is all about, they can teach their younger siblings and other kids in the neighborhood how to trade. Spreading the word about barter not only helps them to create more potential trading partners but also strengthens their network of friends and neighbors, building a better community. At the same time, it empowers those they teach, just as they were empowered. Your children could offer to teach bartering at meetings of Girl and Boy Scouts (maybe even earning a badge in American business, labor, or culture), youth groups, community groups, after-school programs, Future Farmers of America, Junior Achievement, and other such groups.

Older kids have an opportunity to turn learning into barter opportunities and, potentially, into a future expertise or even a profession. If your son or daughter is curious about a particular skill, an apprenticeship with an expert in that field is the beginning of learning that skill and mastering it later on. That sort of skill or capability can turn into a barterable ability that will produce great rewards for your kids. For example, if your child is interested in cutting hair, throwing a ceramic pot, repairing engines, or making guitars, she could apprentice herself to someone who knows that job well. By trading her time, labor, and willingness to learn, she could slowly become a hairstylist, ceramist, mechanic, or luthier. Once she has mastered the skills, she can then ply her new “trade” for cash and barter. Simply by bartering her time, your child has opened a door to an exciting new pastime and maybe even a source of income for years to come.

Bartering can even become a pathway to college. Some colleges and universities accept barter in exchange for tuition. Some, like La Roche College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are members of barter brokerages and accept trade credits for tuition. Others, such as Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri, accept direct trades for tuition. Imagine your high school senior helping to raise livestock or trading her Web site development skills to earn tuition to college.

Once your children have mastered the basics of bartering, they can turn it into other forms of academic gold. They can write school reports, essays, and extra credit term papers on it for language arts, economics, sociology, civics, and history classes. (Did you know that 400 communities issued their own barter currency during the Great Depression?) You can bet that barter will be a subject their teachers won’t have read about a few gazillion times before, and your students will simultaneously score some extra credit and brownie points for writing about such an unusual subject. (For teachers who want to incorporate barter into their classroom lessons, see the sample lesson plan in the Resources section.)

WHERE TO TRADE?

Many places are available for kids to barter, although some will require adult supervision or permission. The most logical and first spot should be bartering in the home. Trading with siblings is a great way to get started, and you can help the beginners with logistics. Family is the best place to start since any mistakes or misunderstandings will be easy to correct and put right. After that, the easiest spots will be with your extended family members (aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc.), neighborhood, place of worship, community center, school, social groups, and the like.

In the online world, there are also great Web sites such as U-Exchange that offer bartering. Many require that participants be eighteen years old or older, so parents will have to be involved. As we mentioned before, we encourage you to limit trades for newbies, younger children, or those involving people you don’t know so that only older teens trade on the Internet with adult supervision, and no child, no matter the age, is trading with a stranger.

The online world also offers some other trading possibilities for your kids that are less direct. They could post a few of their wants and their haves on their Facebook page or send out tweets with the same mini lists. Your kids might even be able to persuade their school’s parent-teacher organization to let them send out barter announcements to their e-mail list or on their Google, Yahoo! or other invitation-only online group.

The various barter groups to be found on Meetup.com offer a different take on Web site trading. This community and social networking site gives individuals the possibility to set up their own barter clubs via the Internet. Groups invite members and can exchange e-mail and notices aimed at organizing face-to-face meetings that allow the group members to trade. Check to see if there is a Meetup.com barter group in your town. (If there isn’t and you’re feeling spunky, you could start one!) Some sites are dedicated to specific types of bartering, such as homegrown food, alternative healing providers, small business, moms, collecting, and lots more. Be aware that some groups will charge a membership fee, often nominal, to join.

If a neighbor is having a garage sale, and your little one spots something he or she wants at the sale, that’s a perfect time for him or her to offer a trade. Maybe she could trade for whatever she wants by folding clothes during the event or helping to clean up afterward; perhaps your son could carry items to buyers’ cars or cart trash to the bin or turn unsold goods into new barter items. Whatever your son or daughter is willing and capable of doing, he or she can begin the conversation with the garage sale holder and see what sort of help is needed.

If you have joined a barter exchange, your children could come aboard as subaccounts. You’ll need to add them yourself and make sure they understand that barter-exchange trades have cash costs and must be approved by Mom and Dad. Because there is such a wide array of goods available on exchanges, you will definitely have to be involved in this sort of trading. It will also require educating your children about what the limits are to their bartering. Think of children and brokerages as giving your children a credit card. Imagine that the membership is like sending your kids to the mall with a credit card that has no limit. Would you want to just set them free and say, “Have fun”? Set a limit on how much they can barter each month. You may even want to liken it to an allowance or call it just that so they understand there are finite amounts involved and using the exchange is a privilege, not a right.

Many towns have flea markets, swap meets, farmers’ markets, or barter fairs (or faires, as it is often spelled) that offer a cornucopia of trading opportunities. Kids can take their items with them to the event and see if vendors will trade with them. Since these gatherings aren’t limited to charging a fixed price, and haggling is a way of life, barter is not just accepted, it’s encouraged. At barter fairs, kids and adults alike are encouraged to volunteer their labor to set up, operate, and take down the fair to keep costs low for the often-volunteer operators. Older kids who have become experienced traders may want to set up their own booth to trade goods. Some fairs even have a “freecycle” table where kids can drop off items and pick up others that they can travel around the fair with, offering to swap for vendors’ items. It’s truly an event that is intended to empower people of all ages to get into the barter habit.

Other trading partners can be found among neighbors, school friends, fellow members at places of worship, bulletin boards at grocery stores, your children’s own Web site if they’re tech savvy, and a swap meet they organize in your driveway or at school. (Don’t wait for others to organize it; help them do it!)

To a lesser degree, trading with established retailers or businesses is possible as well. Kids will likely have more luck with a locally owned company rather than a larger chain, following basically the same rules that apply to adults who want to trade. Young people just need to take a look at what their interests and abilities are and what the needs of the business might be before making an offer. Perhaps the local pizza parlor that holds kids’ birthday parties would like a party wrangler to help out on Saturdays in exchange for free sodas and pizza for the wrangler? Maybe one of your town’s car dealers could use a car detailer on weekends in exchange for working toward owning a used car? Does the corner barbershop need someone to sweep up hair and answer phones? Keep in mind that they’ll have to abide by child labor law restrictions. Ultimately, anything is possible for a child or teenager who is motivated and supported in the great adventure that is bartering.

GREAT TRADE!

Cedar Braaten learned how to barter by the time he was barely out of diapers. Of course, it helped that his mom, Stacey Williams, is a big barter fan as well. It was only natural that she taught her son what she knew. As an eleven-year-old rock hound, he loves trading with others for crystals and stones he doesn’t have. He is also pretty savvy when it comes to bartering for used bikes, fixing them up, and then selling them for cash. After all, an eleven-year-old’s allowance when there are three other siblings in the house goes only so far.

Probably his best trade was exchanging a bracelet he got for free for a fishing downrigger. (Downriggers cost at least $100 new and often cost five to eight times more than that.) That was especially sweet because Cedar didn’t have a downrigger, and he really wanted one. If he’d had to rely on the typical eleven-year-old’s allowance alone, he might have been shaving before he could have afforded to buy one.

Cedar trades with his thirteen-year-old sister, Sadie, but he’s learned that trading with his younger brothers, seven-year-old Jaden and four-year-old Tabor, can be frustrating. They barter, but later, they take back what they traded. Cedar says he’ll trade with them when they’re older. Maybe.

TRADING TIPS FOR KIDS

• Don’t start trading without your parents’ approval.
• Start with family and friends.
• Make a list of what you can offer to trade.
• Make another list of what you want.
• Get an idea of what your items are worth.
• Get an idea of what someone else’s goods/services are worth.
• Ask your neighbors if you can trade with them.
• Trade with strangers only with your parents’ permission.
• Trade fair! Treat people the way you want to be treated.
• Ask your mom or dad to take you to a barter fair. Tell them they might make some great trades themselves, and they’ll definitely have fun.

LET’S MAKE A LIST

Here are some lists you can copy to keep track of what you have available to trade, who you’ve traded with, and how much you’ve saved or earned in barter. To get started, ask yourself these three questions:

1. What do I have to barter with? (Examples: sweaters, shoes, or sporting goods you have outgrown)
2. What can I do that I could barter? (Examples: cleaning, babysitting, or bike repair)
3. What do I know that I could barter? (Examples: teaching someone math, how to knit, how to ski, or how to play guitar)

Have fun bartering!

WHAT I HAVE TO TRADE

Item/Service	Estimated Value

WHAT CAN YOU TRADE?

Here’s a list of some barter possibilities
for kids:
Accessories
Babysitting
Baking
Baseball cards
Bikes
Birthday party “wrangler” (assistant)
Board games
Books
Bulb planting
Car detailing
Car repair
Car washing
Caring for livestock
Cat grooming
CDs
Chauffeuring
Clean out people’s garages, attics,
sheds
Clothes
Collectibles
Companion for the elderly
Computer and video games
Cooking
Creating Web sites
Data entry
Dating coach
Dog grooming
Dog training
Dog walking
DVDs
Fashion consultant
Hairstyling (braiding, coloring,
cutting)
Hedge trimming
Hitting coach
Hold yard sales for people
House painting
Housecleaning
House-sitting
Internet research
Jewelry
Knitting
Lawn mower repairs
Lawn mowing
Leaf raking
Makeup application
Making greeting cards
Oil changes or other car repairs
Old and/or unused musical instruments
Old and/or unused sports equipment
Painting old or found furniture
Paintings
Pet sitting
Planting gardens
Poop scooping
Refinishing old or found furniture
Rides to school
Room decorating
Scooters
Sewing
Snow shoveling
Teach a language
Teach guitar or other musical
instruments
Teach skateboarding
Teach skiing, baseball, or other
sports
Term-paper proofreading
Toys
Tutoring
Unused game consoles
Use of your skateboard, baseball,
or other sports equipment
Watering gardens
Weeding gardens
Window washing