Question 7: How do you handle situations when your Little
asks you to go out to eat or asks you to buy him/her things? What is your
response?
BB – Erick:
I joke about it with him and tell him he has to wait until
Christmas/birthday. Sometimes I do bring
him stuff anyway when he doesn’t expect it.
BS – Jen:
When we hang out it is usually supper time, so sometimes we get a sub or
something. My Little doesn’t ask me to
buy things for her. I try not to spend
much money on her, sometimes we will get a treat but other times we just hang
out.
BS – Mary:
The first day we met, my Little asked if we could go out to eat. While we do not go out to eat often, we will
occasionally depending on when we get together.
I try to spend time with her outside of meal times and will let her mom
know if I’ll have her back for dinner or if she’ll need to eat at home before
we get together. We actually went
shopping a few weeks ago to pick up a few items for a recipe we were making
together. While driving to the store I
asked my Little to help make a list of the things we needed. I wasn’t sure how our time would go in the
store and felt the list really helped.
My Little asked me to buy her things several times in the store and each
time I would ask her if it was on our list.
She would look and then say no, and we would go on our way. I’m not sure if this will work every time,
but I think it helped keep her focus.
There will
also be times when she will ask to do certain activities that might be more
than I would like to spend at the time and I tell her that her idea is a good
one and that activity is something we can think about doing for a special
day/occasion. My Little will usually say
“I don’t care” when I ask her what we should do together so when I give her
options I make sure the options are low cost or even free activities we can do
together to help with this as well.
Question 8: Have you used the resources provided by BBBS,
such as the resource room, activity totes at schools, BIG Card, and Key
Card? If so, what do you like about
them?
BB – Erick:
No, we have not
BS – Jen: We have used the BIG card at a
couple of places. Most recently, we went
to Texas Roadhouse and my Little’s meal was free! Yahoo!!
I have not used the resource room but I am grateful for the BIG card –
love having those discounts!
BS – Mary:
YES – we love the resource room and check out items whenever we
can. For my Little, this really helps
her decide what we should do together and helps keep the money spending to a
minimum for me. We have used the BIG
card and plan to use the Key Card more this winter to visit museums and attend
plays. We enjoy the activities hosted by
BBBS as well and attend as many as we can.
Question 9: Any other words of advice for Bigs?
BB – Erick:
Stick with it! It does take some
time to develop the friendship, trust and open communication.
BS – Mary:
I would say keep the time you spend together simple and have fun! Focus on spending quality time with your
Little. You can incorporate your Little
into your daily life/errands as well.
For example, this summer I had a few wedding gifts to purchase and I
thought my Little might be interested in coming along. She had never seen a registry before or the
idea behind it and we ended up making a game out of it; who could find the
aisle first or the item first, etc. My
Little even gave her input on what gift would be best to purchase and got a
lesson in math all at the same time. So
something as simple as running an errand can turn into an afternoon of
fun. Just keep up the consistency and
contact BBBS if you ever run into a problem – they have been very helpful in my
match so far!
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