My kingdom (or $4.99) for a sword

MY children, at 7 and 5, have discovered money. Not the value of it but the fact of it: how good it feels in your hand, in your pocket, that more is better -- though “more” is still defined in quantity rather than denomination. And they’ve learned that if you give a clerk enough of it, she will let you walk out of the store with a new Bionicle or My Little Pony.

This breakthrough, in time, will allow our family to organize its own little internal economy -- a society in which beds are made and trash taken out by someone other than my husband and me. For now, however, it has added a whole new dimension to traveling.

We are not a financially organized family that has a vacation account or even a vacation budget. Travel is important to us so we treat it as we treat any other essential expenditure -- we try to get the best deals we can, we don’t eat out a lot, and then we just hope for the best.

My husband, Richard, and I are not foodies, we don’t drink, don’t collect anything except books, and neither of us has too much interest in high fashion. We travel for the people and the places rather than the things. Still, we do abide by the rule that you never regret money spent while traveling, only the money you didn’t spend.

With that in mind, we are in the ever-changing process of coping with the “toy factor.” We have tried letting the kids take toys on trips, but that’s a pain. If they bring the important ones and lose them, it casts a pall on the trip. Our daughter, Fiona, is still in mourning for Emily, the stuffed panda she dropped into one of the animal cages at the Coliseum two years ago.

And you will buy them new toys. Because this is vacation, darn it, and they would rather have a notepad from West Ireland’s Aillwee Cave or another set of army men than an ice cream bar. Who are you to refuse them?

On long trips, we have an understanding with our kids that they can buy a couple of nice things to take home and a number of plastic tea sets and toy soldiers that will be left behind.

We budget for these through a highly sophisticated manner of savings -- a milk bottle full of loose change collected throughout the year (average yield: $95) and the contents of a ceramic cow into which Mom and Dad must put a dollar every time they use a bad word in front of the children (average yield: none of your beeswax).

This, along with gifts from Nana, provide our kids with their goodie money -- for toys, ice cream, rock candy, carnival rides or other distractions that Mom and Dad would, left to their own devices, refuse.

Now that my kids have begun to understand money, however, they have taken to supplementing these funds with tooth-fairy accounts and last-minute offers of salaried chores.

On trips this summer, they each wanted to carry their own money and pay for their own items. This provided an excellent learning experience for both child and parent. The children learned the value of money and that it comes in all shapes and sizes (my kids love euros, especially the coins), and I learned never to give a 5-year-old an amount I am unwilling to replace when the 5-year-old loses it. (This is especially true with euros, given the exchange rate.)

Here I would like to make a suggestion that many will no doubt see as my capitulation to the commercial overindulgence of children, but bear with me.

We have learned to buy the kids their toys first. Oh, I remember my parents’ admonition that there would be no souvenirs until the museum/fort/beach had been thoroughly enjoyed, but what kind of thinking is that? If you know you’re going to get the kid a stuffed saber-toothed tiger, why not get it first, when it will help her enjoy that exhibit of early man? For instance, here is what I know about my son after years of traveling with him: The boy needs a plastic sword. In all countries and all forms, they seem to cost $4.99, so this does not seem an unreasonable request. But he needs it right away.

We have tried the reasonable approach -- “I’m sure we’ll see one as we travel through Ireland/Italy/Fort McHenry” -- but time has taught me that this is self-defeating. With a sword, Danny is the ideal travel mate -- playing knight, he has been known to go on five-mile hikes with little complaint and allow his parents to have a nice lunch in a quiet piazza while he and his sister play Musketeers nearby. He even understands the necessity of sheathing it or checking it in places with crowds.

Without a sword, he is restless and irritable. And he makes clear this monotonous need at three-minute intervals. So we have learned to get the guy a sword as soon as humanly possible. And I have found it is not a difficult thing to do. Set loose in places as disparate as Rome, Yosemite and Cabo San Lucas, Danny can find a sword in about 10 minutes. Fiona usually gets one too, although lately she has been gravitating more toward kitty cats. To each her own.

The trick, of course, is making it clear that if there is a “before,” there will not be an “after” -- we do not double-dip in the gift shop. Now that they’re spending their own money, this is much easier to explain.