Is It Wrong to Teach My 10-Year-Old To Play Poker?

Teaching my daughter to play poker

What say you?  Am I a bad parent for teaching my 10-year-old daughter to play poker?

Some might say yes.

Some might say that I'm teaching my daughter that gambling is OK, at an age when she is very impressionable.

But I don't see it that way.

Play poker, for free thanks to Zynga, teaches many things, including:

• Money management
• Patience (good things come to those who wait...)
• Discipline
• Statistics
• Budgeting
• Calculated risk (risk management)
• How to think (e.g. not to make strong bets out of position)
• Keeping a cool head under pressure
• The perils of overconfidence
• The importance of being bold, when the timing is right
• Practice anything every day and YOU WILL become an expert
• Self-esteem / self-respect: never play crappy cards....NEVER!
• etc. etc. etc.

To those who still don't agree with my position, let me shed some more light on my point of view.


Back in 1979, I was 9 going on 10, and living in NYC.  I was @ the UN school (UNIS) on the East River (www.UNIS.org.)  A very, VERY good school, but not a good school for me.  I had some serious issues with discipline, and my learning suffered.  My dad, suffering much resistance from my mother, insisted that I attend an English boarding school in 1981.  I went, and I'm glad I did. 


In 1979, while I was @ UNIS, my sister, at age 9, attended the very, VERY prestigious Dalton School (www.dalton.org.)  Dalton only has The Trinity School (www.trinityschoolnyc.org) as an institutional  peer.

At Dalton, my sister was taught about economics and the stock market, AT AGE 9!  She used to tell me about the virtual stock portfolio she had, and how her teachers would monitor her portfolio's performance every day.

Are the equity markets risky?  Yes!  Just ask the folks who lost their life savings when General Motors -- a top Fortune 500 company -- collapsed during the peak of the Great Recession.

But if you teach your kids early, they can learn to play the market, and be wealthy at an early age.  Yep.  Of this I have no doubt.

And that's the difference between a good school, and a great school.  A great school will teach kids very serious money lessons very, very early.  Why?  Because they get it.  Teach kids important money lesson as early as possible, and chances are, you won't have to worry about their financial well-being when they grow up. SIMPLE AS THAT.

You don't have to have loads of money, or be a movie star,  to teach your kids to be successful in life.  Just take the time to teach them all the good stuff you've learned over time, as often as possible.  That's the difference between good parenting, as just phoning it in.

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Money and happiness ... illusory correlation?

Some might argue that the correlations between love and happiness are illusory. Ask a poor loved person what they could use more of and chances are they will say money. Ask a rich single person what they lack and chances are they will say love. How do we rank our human necessities and our mental necessities? In doing this, one would also be taking into consideration that our own struggles have fixated our minds on the needs of life, as we see them. If survival is our basic human instinct, does that make love our basic human necessity? I can't say for sure money can't buy me happiness, but I'm positive love has never written a check for my bills.

I was a teen mother and the only true description I can give you on our lives at that time is that we were broke, I mean broke to the brokest of broken! Yes, I said brokest. That’s how broke we were. I had to expand my vocabulary in order to describe it because Webster couldn’t even help me with that. I was eight months pregnant sleeping on the floor, and every morning when I woke up although my body felt like I got hit by a 40,000 lb truck moving at 75 mph. I was young and in love. There were times when comfort was by no means within a three hundred mile radius of my life, but I can’t recall ever being really and truly unhappy.

My impecunious status not just throughout the times of my pregnancy with my first born, but through life in general was the fuel my mind needed to climb out of the struggle. By the time I was 21, I was a licensed real estate agent. Three children and a career later, I thought for certain my life was coming together. I mingled amongst the rich, and it was smashing! I sipped wine that made my lips cringe and ate cheese that made my nose curl. My swallows were shallow and my breaths were deep when I found out that caviar was processed salted roe, and not just a “seasoning”. I had to talk my body into keeping it down. The thought of puking all over the marble floor was mortifying. I explored my vocabulary to the very depths of my being to validate the house on the corners price tag and its empty lot next door. My first commission check was like winning the lottery, only better. I had done this, I was making money! Things were definitely at their high point because with money came happiness. Right? Wasn’t happiness moneys right hand man?

“Money makes the world go ‘round” was what I had heard so many times. Real estate meant money, and in my life lacked money so it didn't take a college education for my mind to convolute the two. Three years into my real estate career, I was divorcing. I by no means blame myself because I know there were so many other issues that came between us, but it's one of those things that isn't supposed to happen when you have life figured out. Through hours of soul searching and chicken souping my hit-by-a-train soul I came to the realization that I had lost all the passion I once knew. Life became strictly business, the laughs and good times were scarce. What I did had to benefit me in one way or another. If it didn’t make me money, I wouldn’t do it. I knew this wasn’t what my HEART wanted to do, but my WALLET loved it. If I didn't have to spend another day sleeping on the floor or worrying about groceries for the next week, I was ok. Wasn’t I? I wasn't ok, this wasn't ok. I lost my grip.

I can honestly say only up until recently have I realized what I want to be when I grow up. I revisited my heart and took into account my feelings and my ambitions for life and not the balance in my checking account. Although you can’t let money drive you, it’s important to remain aware that love alone cannot sustain you. Take all your life’s lessons, unique ideas and yes, even some of those so regretted mistakes and mush them together. Then sift through them patiently until you find that yummy goodness. Find that middle ground in life, and ride life until the wheels fall off! I have yet to meet someone who can honestly tell me they want to struggle for money, but I’ve met all too many who have said the money wasn’t worth the life they lost. I've seen the money, now where is the love?

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