Will Work For Doll

When Samantha was 7 years old, she became obsessed with a doll. It wasn't just any doll. It was a $100 American Girl doll named -- what else? -- Samantha. That's right, one hundred smackeroos.

I told Samantha what $100 was worth. Ten Barbie dolls. Eight take-out pizzas. Twenty Magic Treehouse books.

"But I really want her," she said. And no wonder. It seemed all the girls she knew already had these dolls, along with their dresses, furniture, and pet animals.

It wasn't that we couldn't afford the doll. But we also didn't want to just hand it to her without an understanding of its value, only to have her set the doll aside two months later. So we gave Samantha until her eighth birthday to earn the money to buy it.

"I'll do it!" she announced. "What's my job?"

Samantha became our resident laundress. For a paltry buck, Samantha washed, dried and folded. Yes, I admit it was slave wages. But we wanted her to learn that this was a big purchase, one that required time and labor. We figured if she worked for it, the doll would mean more.

For nearly a year, Samantha toiled away. She actually became quite good at doing laundry, though the clothes were never folded as neatly as I would have liked, and the drying rack was often a mishmash of wet clothing.

I kept my gripes to myself. Samantha was doing her job and doing it with pride. Slowly, the bills piled up. "Mom, I have $37!" she'd say proudly.

To help Samantha visualize her progress, we kept a chart. For every $5 she earned, we posted a picture of a Magic Treehouse book. At the bottom of the chart, we stuck a picture of the Samantha doll, with the word "GOAL" written over it.

Along the way, her grandparents slipped her a few dollars, and Samantha earned money for other occasional jobs. By the time her birthday rolled around in November, she had $127, a tidy sum that covered taxes and still left her some change, which I convinced her to put in savings.

Though Samantha has since gotten three other dolls from this line, she recently told my mother that this doll is her favorite. When my mother asked why, Samantha declared, "Because I bought her myself. With my own money."