8 gifts NOT to BUY your KID

By Liz Pulliam Weston

A cell phone
Buy your kid a cell, and you've blown what could have been a great teaching tool. Why? Because your child is desperate to have a cell phone and willing to do almost anything for one -- including work for it.
It's not too much to ask your child to save up for a phone and to pay the monthly cost, particularly when you can get unlimited texting/unlimited Web-access plans from pay-as-you-go providers such as Virgin Mobile for as little as $25 a month (pay-as-you-go metroPCS has a $40 plan that includes unlimited calling). If the kids don't pay the bill, the phone stops working, bringing home the consequences of financial irresponsibility.
Saving for a goal, budgeting for an expense, bearing the consequences if a bill isn't paid -- these are all great money lessons you should be teaching your child.
And what's too young for a cell phone? You should probably hold off until your kids are middle-school age, when they're old enough to do things like walk a neighbor's dog or be a mother's helper to raise cash.
A gift card
You can read my full rant, "Why gift cards aren't gifts." Here's the short version: A real gift takes observation and thought. It demonstrates you've considered the person's special interests, talents and preferences, then chosen something designed to delight her.
If the gift is a misfire, as it sometimes will be, the recipient gets the opportunity to practice tact and diplomacy -- to learn, as I said in my earlier column, to express "gratitude to people who tried to make us happy, however bizarre the actual result."
Giving and receiving gifts is an art you have to learn, and the chance to teach your kids this art is entirely lost when you're thrusting a wad of plasticized cash at them. If you have to cop out and buy gift cards for other relatives, OK, but don't do it to your kids. Get them a real gift instead.
Author "rants" more fully about why "gift cards are not gifts."
A replacement gift
If your child was negligent and broke or lost an expensive gift, don't rush out to replace it. Kids need to know there are consequences, and if you replace the bike that got stolen because Junior neglected to put it away, you're teaching him that it's OK to be irresponsible.
Start down that path now, and he'll be hitting you up to pay off his credit card bills when he's 35. Whatever it was, he can live without it until he earns the money to buy a replacement.
More tips from the above slide show