Anarchism or anticapitalistic mindfulness for kids?

September 12, 2023 10:29 AM

My autistic+PDAer+anxious kid is hyperfixated on money these days. Monopoly money won't do; it has to be real money. He is not interested in spending it, just on acquiring and growing large amounts. This impossible craving causes a lot of dysregulation.

My child is 7. Like many PDAers, he is fixated on a sense of control and autonomy, spilling over into equalization. His brain is troubled by, and fixates on, ideas of hierarchy and money. Part of it comes from a natural gamification impulse (make a score or number increase) and part of it from the very real fact that we live in a world where money matters, and kids pick up on this.

I would like to show him really well-made and effective videos/books/etc that present him with a different paradigm that can relax him. The usual fare on anarchism for kids ("A is for Activist") etc is utterly useless, repeating a bunch of meaningless buzzwords or concepts that make no sense to a child. Likewise, he often finds mindfulness resources annoying and boring.

My ideal would be a video that can explain very logically and engagingly, in a way that neither preaches nor delves into boring histories, how one can let go of the craving for money and control. In the best case, this would play to his natural drive for autonomy, showing that a better world is possible for all adults and kids, and also that each of us, within our own lives, can live better and more happily by applying mindfulness to our cravings.

I don't necessarily expect to find this perfect, ideal resource, but any suggestions along these lines would be helpful.

posted by splitpeasoup to Health & Fitness (15 answers total)

My first thought was that someone should have an updated video on these aspects of the Black Panther party’s 10 point program curriculum.
posted by childofTethys at 12:33 PM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

I mean, A Christmas Carol is the classic story written to make exactly the points you're describing. I'm not sure about other film adaptations, but the 1984 TV version with George C. Scott, at least, explicitly spells out how the main character's problems are grounded in inflexible thinking plus anxiety over control through financial independence.

There are a fair number of other classic kids' stories that show naturally control- or power-oriented, money-hungry children contrasted with more generous, easygoing peers-- The Great Brain series and Gordon Korman's No Coins, Please are two very entertaining examples. Neither of those get super preachy about the Value of Sharing or anything, but they definitely contain vivid scenes that highlight the virtue of prioritizing relationships above the bottom line. A naturally money-focused child could easily breeze past those moments in a solo reading, but if you read the books together, there would be a lot of opportunities to pause and discuss the social implications of different approaches to profit.
posted by Bardolph at 12:36 PM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Chiming back in with one more suggestion: Jean Merrill's The Pushcart War doesn't focus much on money per se, but it does present a very sympathetic picture of small-time underdogs fighting large, rich corporate interests, and stresses the real power of cooperation and resourcefulness vs. pure size and wealth. Like Great Brain and No Coins, Please, Pushcart War also has an interest in complex system-building and mechanism that I suspect would be very engaging to certain folks on the spectrum.
posted by Bardolph at 12:48 PM on September 12, 2023 [5 favorites]

I am a children's therapist, I am not YOUR child's therapist, this is not therapeutic advice.

What does having money mean to him? When you say he's fixated on a sense of control and autonomy, what leaps out to me is ANXIETY. How would having all this money soothe his anxiety? Rather than trying to communicate "craving money isn't necessary" in a global way, I'd suggest trying to get to specifics--what is that money going to protect him from? What will it let him control? and then talk about *those* things.
posted by epj at 12:58 PM on September 12, 2023 [20 favorites]

Well, there's always An Inconvenient Truth, specifically the part where Al Gore shows the scale infographic with the Earth on one side of the scale and a pile of gold bars on the other side weighing it down, and he goes "Oh boy, look at all that gold! Yum yum, right? yummy, yummy money! but... uhoh, all the gold and all the money comes from the Earth, here, so if we think that money is actually valuable and we keep on using the Earth to make more and more money and we destroy it... Oh no! No more money! [Or food, water, habitable above-ground space, or breathable air.] Looks like we are valuing the wrong thing!"

On second thought, maybe not for a little seven-year-old. It would probably be more terrifying than relaxing. It might lead him to question the whole money premise currently making him unhappy and it might help him understand money's actual role in human health, happiness, and safety, but it might also make him feel even more anxious and unhappy. :(
posted by Don Pepino at 1:11 PM on September 12, 2023

I heard what you said about monopoly money but I have been playing a stock simulation game - Wallstreet Survivor - which is exactly like really playing the stock market. They start you with 100,000 and I went to 400,000 in a year and a half! I believe if I took training, whatever that is, to be a stock broker - I could show my clients this to prove my abilities. So it feels very real to me. In real life I pretty much only invest in index funds (single stocks too risky, the game is the only place I can try that out).

Another thing - if he is interested in bitcoin at all, if through his research he thinks it would be a good investment - I would buy him 500 dollars worth of bitcoin. So he can have fun tracking it. Then if he earns money somehow while he is still in your household I would allow him to spend half of it on bitcoin if he thinks it is a good idea, but the other half in savings or investments that are not cryptocurrency.

If he were my kid I would read the books "Your Money or your Life" and "Rich Dad Poor Dad" to him like storybooks. Yes, the RDPD guy has gone a little off grid but I stand by the first book in that he discusses philosophies about making money. I think your child is already questioning these philosophies and hey, why not use these books to discuss it with him?

And last, I have been listening to podcast Pivot and the Prof G podcast with Scott Galloway. This is problematic because he makes penis jokes but wow, he shares exactly how he makes money (basically through investing). It's probably all above a 7 year old, might be boring. I'm not sure if I would let my 7 year old listen (probably would if he showed an interest). YMMV. Things I like about him: He confirms my investing strategies. He is very clear he makes money to (1) provide for his family and then (2) help other people out and (3) to have fun with his family and friends (sharing, taking them on fun vacations). He is also studying and writing a book on what it means to be a man and the ideas he shares on that subject I whole heartily endorse. Maybe you could listen and use it as talking points with your child? "Hey, Scott says he thinks Apple is being run really well right now and that's why he is investing, what do you think of that?" (A lot of Apple investing is one of the ways I got to 400,000 in my game, before I heard Galloway)
posted by cda at 1:30 PM on September 12, 2023

I don't know what would be age-appropriate, but I also thought of Your Money or Your Life, which is very much about the idea of enough money. The Psychology of Money is another relevant adult book.

A Christmas Carol is very on-point for miserliness.
Treasure Island, perhaps unsurprisingly, has a lot of personal finance content as well.
posted by mersen at 2:07 PM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

- The anarchist parenting subreddit apparently had a relevant stickied post but it is one of the ones that chose to close earlier this year. This is the closest thing I could find on the Wayback Machine. Maybe something helpful in here?

https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://old.reddit.com/r/RaisingAnarchy/comments/rp9qpl/raising_hell_a_collection_of_helpful_resources/

- Here's a simple presentation on mutual aid - not geared toward kids, but makes fewer assumptions re the listener than many of the others, doesn't swear it up, and is under 5 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF-6DTX8ztI.

Re streaming videos, I don't have an account but still and always, YT is quick to try to push me to gross rightwing content, regardless of what I'm searching or watching. Here's a different mutual aid take, a bit over 5 minutes, with maybe more complex concepts but also livelier content, on the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/MutualAid_201609/MutualAidFinal-sd.mp4

- The anarchist publishers (e.g., AK Press, Haymarket, PM Press) have kids sections but I don't have first hand knowledge of the titles to know whether they'd be better than the ones you've already looked at.

The other two fields that come to mind, are

- music: many genres will have troubadours singing about social and economic issues but the punk --> anarchy education pipeline is famed. Does he like 8-bit? Folk sing alongs? Head bangers? There will probably be a person or band with the message you seek.

- and video or board games. Here for example is a quick educational web game on the dynamics of cooperation vs competition although it does focus on the accumulation of coins https://ncase.me/trust/ Might provide a good segue into other material?
posted by to wound the autumnal city at 3:54 PM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think it would help to talk to him about his worries too. I wonder if he's worried about how much money you have and his level is safety there. If so, you could show him your budget and savings and things like that so he has a better sense of how the money in his family works.
posted by blueberry monster at 5:32 PM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

I wonder if the other way might be to lean into it a little with him. He is interested in acquiring money, ok, for what and how much does he need. Those little divider money-boxes are kinda great here, because one section is for spending, one for saving, and one for charity or other gifting. It might help him see it as a fungible that is for getting things, while still allowing an amount for saving "to have". So you could set some goals together, or build a box yourself that shows the percentages, a smaller part for giving and saving and a larger part for enjoying life and having ice-cream now.

So, hey bobby, what do you need money for? Comics and ice-cream. Ok, so what, two comics a month and ice-cream every week? Your needs are 10 dollars. Now, you want to save some, so 3 dollars to save, and 2 dollars to treat a friend to an icecream or give to a charity, that means you want to make 15 dollars in a month. Your allowance is your age, 7, so you want to make about 8 more bucks. Would you take on some extra household tasks to earn it, or would you like to talk to mr jones about walking his dog on saturdays?
posted by Iteki at 1:21 AM on September 13, 2023

Does this didactic approach generally work with his interests that lead to dysregulation? I want to answer your question directly but I think you are asking two questions: 1) how to teach values about money; 2) how to address dysregulation. It’s possible that ignoring his perseveration on money will work better for the latter. For the former (teaching values) I give my son a modest allowance he has to use for most “fun” extras (eg Fortnite v-bucks) and I try to have an ongoing discussion with him about household finances.
posted by haptic_avenger at 4:32 AM on September 13, 2023

Response by poster: I think you are asking two questions: 1) how to teach values about money; 2) how to address dysregulation.

Good question. I'm mostly interested in addressing his dysregulation. Ignoring doesn't work. He is anxious and fixated, but also very smart and logical, and is not easily fobbed off. He is only convinced by substantial answers, and I see mindfulness and anarchism as potential substantial answers. As a sidenote, I am also guessing that anarchism might make sense to him and be good for him because of his PDA brain.

Someone else mentioned trying something like talk therapy. Because he is autistic and PDAer, a direct verbal approach can be too pressure-y and make him clam up, especially when it is something he is already anxious about. Hence my search for resources and visual aids.

He already gets a allowance (which we started doing in response to his heightened pressing for personal control of money) but unlike some other children he has no interest in spending it, only in accumulating it. It is $1/week and has added up to about $50 by now, but he wants to accumulate thousands or millions of dollars, and is quite stressed over this. Some of this has been influenced by the games he plays (OpenTTD or Roller Coaster Tycoon), in which money tends to be in large numbers.
posted by splitpeasoup at 9:59 AM on September 13, 2023

You actually can ignore him, though. By all means, you should engage him intellectually how you want when he is calm. But when he’s perseverating/has asked you the same question 10 times, you can ignore him.
posted by haptic_avenger at 12:22 PM on September 13, 2023

I don't think I would assume that the concept of money your child is fixating on is an adult's concept of money, especially now that you mention the games. Can you start by taking those games away? There are plenty of similar games that don't involve fictional money.

Sometimes it's possible to quell anxiety by rationalizing away the object of it, but that only works if the anxiety is irrational or unrealistic. Worrying about money -- in the way an adult would -- is very much rooted in reality. Anti-capitalism and anarchism don't debunk material fears. They're just philosophies about values. I'm concerned that if you try this educational approach, you child will still fixate on money but will also now believe that this makes him a bad person.

If you want to rationalize away the anxiety, perhaps you could focus on the games and point out that the game designers use money as a way to control the challenge level of the game. Game money is just a prop in a game of pretend, like the imaginary lava when you're playing The Floor is Lava.
posted by Comet Bug at 9:36 PM on September 13, 2023

Can you plan a buy-nothing day where he is with his favorite people doing fun activities that cost zero dollars? Talk about how much fun he had, then point out that money didn't buy his happiness (beyond a certain point of basic needs being met).

Is there a local service project that kids can participate in? The example that comes to mind is gathering food for the local food bank. Maybe he will appreciate an explanation of how much further a dollar goes when donated rather than donating canned food. Maybe he can transfer his obsession about making dollar amounts climb to maximizing donations.
posted by Former Congressional Representative Lenny Lemming at 3:24 AM on September 14, 2023