We had a yard sale last Saturday.  Jaken wanted to sell something, so we decided on big glasses of lemonade and homemade brownies.  This was a whole Warnke family effort.  Sue served as the food technical support person, ten-month-old Tucker giggled and smiled as usual, and I helped with Jaken’s “sales presentation.”  I knew we would need something special for it to be good for him, so we worked on his lines.  One was a simple, “Would you like a brownie?”  The other was, “Would you like some refreshing lemonade?”

These lines coming from a four-year-old boy who had the courage to ask the questions, made the people who came to our yard sale powerless to say no.  More importantly, Jaken had a great chance to learn valuable lessons.  He has been struggling with shyness lately, and he was on the verge of “flight” the whole time he was engaging with those strangers. So much so, he had to go in the house for a few minutes at the beginning of the sale to get himself together.  Then he came back out on his own to get back at it.  Huge moment for him.

He stuck with it.  I was super proud of him and told him so.  He got to learn what pushing through discomfort felt like. He also got to experience the feeling that the reward on the other side can give us, and that lesson is so huge at his age.  He ended up earning twenty-seven dollars, which, if you do the math at fifty cents a shot, means he worked for 54 “yes’s.”  I paid attention—he only got four or five no’s and handled them well.

After the dust settled, we put a portion of his money into his savings piggy bank, and then I kept the promise I had made before the yard sale—I made a special trip with him to Toys R Us.  He purchased what I thought he would, a Lego Bionicle.

I continue to look for opportunities for Jaken to be entrepreneurial, even though at his age, his options are pretty limited.  I can’t wait till he gets a little older and more possibilities become available.