If the real reason the kids have money in their pockets is to make emergency phone calls, there are certainly options which are not so easily convertible to candy. I have some doubts as to whether this is the true explanation.

When my son was in 5th grade, he started writing little video games in a scripting environment. He gave one away, and then pre-sold about 8 not-yet-written titles to his classmates for something like $2 each. Complaints were lodged, and he had to repay all of the money. Sadly, "Killer Bunny" and other vaporware titles never saw the light of day due to the iron fist of the school administration crushing of his entrepreneurial spirit.

Informed choice is always a better route to good results than ham-handed strictures on behaviour.

More specifically, what fool actually believes they can micromanage a child's behaviour to the level of preventing them from ever eating a candy bar? Good luck.

joeblow

Lice through sweatshirts is not a real huge problem. Hats, combs, headphones, those are spreaders.

Controlling middle-school commerce is hard, probably not worth the effort except, well, the way commerce is controlled in general: crack down on fraud, theft, and intimidation. And on the fraud end, not so much to protect the marks from a valuable lesson as to protect the sharps from a dangerous lesson.

My son played guitar, and sold his CDs (built on my computer) for $5.00. I encouraged that - but I also encouraged buying his own blank CDs.

Well, Joe, we're talking about underage children here. Informed choice isn't really on the table. They are not yet able to make good choices.

Parents get to decide lots of things for their children at that age. As a parent, I happen to believe that you need to let them make bad decisions, but only the ones that you are prepared to let them take the consequences of.

If they need the ability to make a phone call, maybe a prepaid calling card would be better?

At our middle school, we could prepay lunches, so the kids never had to take money to school. Making it a non-issue.

Spontaneous commerce at school seems like life-skills development to me.

Does any body know if there is any correlation between adolescent commerce and future financial behavior?

Yep, head lice. Brings back memories of my daughter's grade school hallway. Under the endless rows of unused coat hooks were endless rows of black garbage bags containg the children's outerwear (Minnesota). That seemed to help a lot.

If they have lockers, maybe a garbage bag in every locker for clothing storage would help.

We used to have bets every year on when the head lice notice would first make its appearance. And it was usually within the first two weeks.

In our schools there are a lot of candy sales, but they are for school trips or for some kind of extracirricular sport, mainly hockey.

Jay,

If you think you can control your 11 year old's access to drugs and your thirteen year old's access to dangerous sex and your fifteen year old's access to gangs and guns then you are sadly mistaken.

The only tool you have after about age 10 is the moral values and consumer habits and wise judgment you have instilled in them. Everything else is a fantasy of security.

And that's how it should be. Throughout history the age of adulthood has been about eleven years. Eighteen years' childhood is a perversion of modern post-depression society and a side effect of the need to tighten the unskilled labor market in the 1930s.

So accept that your kids will make choices. Teach them well and hope sincerely they meet some disappointments early that teach them some valuable lessons before they can get into real trouble.

And recognize that school administrators protecting them from mitakes is denying them the wisdom they need to be safe. Keep well-meaning adults hands off those kids before the adults really harm them.

Do kids really need money for emergency phone calls these days? If there is an emergency, can't a kid borrow a cell phone from someone in a public place? People with cell phones are easier to find than pay phones.

At 11 (well-off) kids in Paris have cell phones...

Oh, man, at eleven I was still on my parents' "allowance." At eleven, this would be, oh about 1988, my allowance was a dollar a week. However: for every chore or task I did not complete (practicing the piano, dusting, making my bed, etc.), a quarter was deducted from my allowance. Diabolically, my parents didn't cap the deductions at $0. More than half the time, I owed them money. I didn't have a lot of extra cash when young, and the babysitting (and piano-playing) dollars represented hard labor. Cheapskate early, don't regret it. How much cash does an eleven year-old really need?

I know that in Europe you can buy cell phone-plans that provide almost solely emergency calls. Does this service exist in the US? (Even my cheapskate parents would take collect calls...)

In sixth grade, I started buying big barrels of Blo-Pops (mmm, Blo-Pops....) from Costco and selling the lollipops to kids at school for a quarter. My first entry into capitalism. ;) I think I made a profit of about $25 each week, enough to buy another barrel at $14 or $15 and put some away into the piggy bank (which was eventually squandered on a survival knife -- I don't really know what madness possessed me; one too many Rambo films, or maybe I just wanted to emulate my father, a career soldier).

Amazingly, I don't recall eating my own wares. It pretty much came to a halt when: A) the school started cracking down on competition with official candy sale drives (I can't claim all the credit for this; others were selling candy -- mostly Jolly Ranchers -- by then, though I do believe I was the first) ... and B) some punks stole a bag full of lollipops when I left my bookbag unattended briefly.

"I know that in Europe you can buy cell phone-plans that provide almost solely emergency calls. Does this service exist in the US?"

If it doesn't, it should! Basically what you want is a service with a small (or no) monthly charge which costs a lot per call. With luck your kid never needs to call...

Back in the early 60's I soaked toothpicks in cinnamon oil and sold them for a dime at my middle school. Got busted as a drug dealer.

Once a Child,

I too, was once a child. I have no illusions about the sorts of things my kids will run into. I tell them, for example, "I was in middle school once, I know you know all those words, but swearing all the time is a bad habit, so you aren't going to do it around me."

However, I still have the right, indeed the responsibility, to say "NO" to them. That is part and parcel of teaching them my values.

And that authority extends into the schools.

The only tool you have after about age 10 is the moral values and consumer habits and wise judgment you have instilled in them. Everything else is a fantasy of security.

This is the kind of thing I would have said before I became a parent. In the long run, I think you are right, but you've got the age wrong. I think age 16 is more like it, at least for my kids.

I don't have many rules, but the rules I have have consequences, and we apply them very consistently.
This is critical. Curfews, and so on.

But my kids are wierd, they still want to spend time with me. My daughter and I have conversations about stuff that is deeply personal to her.

They also have values that I like, they aren't afraid to speak out against gay-bashing, for example. They don't watch much TV, though I never made rules about it. We just don't have it on much.

You mean to tell me there exists 11 year old kids in a presumably industrialized country that does not have a cellphone? The mind boggles.

"Does any body know if there is any correlation between adolescent commerce and future financial behavior?"

Anecdotally, I knew a guy who, in high school, after they passed a big tax increase on cigarettes in Washington, had a little interstate smuggling scheme to bring in cheap cigarettes and resell them to his schoolmates. He used some of his profits from that to go into some more legal enterprises, buying and selling computer equipment on eBay and buying remote control cars wholesale and selling them at gun shows. He went on to start his own political talk radio show (by buying a weekly block of time on a local session) and his guests and callers had no idea he was 17.

He's now in college and too busy for such things, but at 20 he's the landlord for two properties he's bought with all his money.

I expect him to be a Senator some day... and then I'll laugh and think back to the time he was 16 and got really drunk at my party and gave a speech on how much he wanted to "do" Ayn Rand. :)

"on a local session"

Sorry, should read "on a local STATION"