<p>
This is the advice I also agree with. She’s doing the work cheerfully. Temper justice with mercy, don’t worry about the exact dollars, and I predict everybody will be happier in the end.</p>
<p>
Me, too. I’m also amazed by the poster who “allows” their kids to make mistakes. ?</p>
<p>I think I am also conflicted about the whole dollars for work around the house scenario because my kids were always expected to take part in projects around their own home as part of the responsibility of being a member of the family. As an example, we never tied allowance to chores. We didn’t want them to feel as if chores were a favor or a consequence. </p>
<p>OP, How old is your D now and at what age did she get her license? If she’s on the young end and this is an error of inexperience, I’d handle it one way. If carelessness or recklessness, then I might ask her to put something specific toward the repair. In a perfect world, I’d want that money to come from outside sources, though.</p>
<p>I’m in the younger generation and I love the OP’s idea. When I scraped my right side mirror backing out of the garage (it’s so tight that you have to fold at least one mirror to get in or out, and I forgot), I paid for and applied the paint myself. If you think you’re responsible enough for a car, then you’re responsible for damage YOU INFLICT on the car. In real life you don’t get brownie points because it was an accident.</p>
<p>The attitude of some parents here astounds me. Why is expecting your kid to do some grunt work to pay back the “debt” a bad thing? The OP wasn’t punitive, wasn’t vindictive, and imho was more than reasonable.</p>
<p>OP - I like how you’ve handled this with your daughter and her attitude in this situation shows you’ve raised her with a sense of responsibility - we all make mistakes but it shows maturity to handle the consequences - even when it’s an accident. She’s also learned to paint a bathroom - great skill for when she has her own home.</p>
<p>My kids do grunt work around the house and they don’t get paid for it. I guess I see scraping a car or getting into accidents (not by choice) as part of day to day living, and the money of fixing those things should come out of family fund. Would I ask my family member to pay back for accidentally scrapping a piece of furniture, breaking a glass or a piece of electronic in the house? When kids were little, and they have purposely drawn on the wall, I have made them clean it up. </p>
<p>When we lived in the States, having a car wasn’t really a privilege, it was more of a necessity. Our kids went to a school half an hour away from home and there was no school bus. We had a choice of taking 2 hours out everyday to drive them or had D1 drive to school and take D2 to ECs. We currently have a driver where we live, during the course of driving us, if he were to get into an accident, we would be paying for it. But if he were to take the car without our permission and got into an accident, it would be on him to repair it.</p>
<p>Every family has a different philosophy when it comes to money - disclosure, sharing. I do agree with a post up thread that if you expect your kids to pay for stuff, it is best to discuss it up front.</p>
<p>
This is how I think of it, too–but I think the specific facts matter, such as the age of the kid, who pays for what normally, what the expectations are for paying for insurance, etc.</p>
<p>There was a thread a bit like this some time back in which the damage to the car happened when the kid parked it and somebody else damaged it, no fault of the kid’s. Some people still thought the kid should pay for the damage. My view was that if it was a family car, this was a family expense. If somebody unknown hit a baseball through your D’s bedroom window, would you expect your D to pay for the damage?</p>
<p>In this case, it’s different because it does appear that the damage is the D’s fault, even if the fault isn’t that great. So I think the OP’s approach is reasonable, although I would still say not to bother figuring out how much the painting is really worth. Call it even when it feels right.</p>
<p>It seems like this justice with mercy is working well for you, OP & your D. The only additional thing that I could think of is having your D arrange the logistics of getting the car to & from the repair shop & detail all the family cars this summer. That should about cover things.</p>
<p>Would also ask her to think of what she would/could have done differently to avoid both of the accidents which occurred. Some of it is time that helps people gain experience & become better drivers, some is learning what things to consider, including “inching” and working more slowly & carefully to change lanes, get out of tight spots. Perhaps a simulation with traffic cones or other things that are like a tight spot would be good for practice.</p>
<p>
My guess is the D is thinking long and hard about that while she’s spending her hours painting the bathroom.</p>
<p>You’re right that it should be discussed though because while the accidents were due to carelessness, she might benefit from rigidly performing certain practices such as ALWAYS turning and looking over her shoulder before changing lanes and not just relying on the mirrors that might have a blind spot, understanding where the dimensions of the vehicle are relative to a wall or car and if unsure, stop and maybe even get out and check it from a different angle (like in a parking spot), etc.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is actually a really good thing to do for practice-- to actually get out and look at the car at different points, especially if this is something the driver struggles with. One of the exercises we did during my drivers training was to line up the car so a certain cone was centered in front of it from left to right, and my instructor got so frustrated we had to switch seats so he could put the car in the proper position and show me what it was supposed to look like. I never did get as good at pulling right into a parking space as I was at backing in or parallel parking.</p>
<p>
I don’t think OP ever said it was due to carelessness. He said:
</p>
<p>You may be right, Oldfort, but the OP also said that both incidents/accidents were not due to recklessness. Acknowledging that “recklessness” can be a subjective term in this case, I would react differently if my child had been the driver in either of these situations. Clearly my child would have been reckless had he not checked his blind spot before changing lanes. I would accept no other excuse from him, especially after I emphasized the importance of checking said blind spot while I was training him. </p>
<p>If my child scraped a car in a “tight, tight” urban parking lot, I would also consider that to be reckless. He should have been driving much slower, probably inching his way though the space, because of the tight quarters. If there would have been an impact, it would have been minor. </p>
<p>But this is me. I get the feeling that OP describes recklessness as driving 100 MPH on a back road and getting air on a hill. So again, it’s subjective.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, OP needs to figure out what the issues are, and then address them.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In real life, consequences apply no matter what the intent. A child who grows up thinking that “it was an accident” or “I didn’t mean to do it” is a free pass on the consequences might continue to offer up excuses for everything that goes wrong in their lives. “Consequences” and “responsibility” should not be confused with “blame”. Cleaning up after one’s own mess or fixing whatever one broke is not a punishment. </p>
<p>I personally think it is a lot easier to assign responsibility without worrying about the blame part, because that is simply more straightforward and less likely to leave the kid feeling resentful in situations where harm was unintentional.</p>
<p>I guess the only thing I would say is that I’d want to make sure my kid’s vision had been checked recently if I were the OP. If she has an uncorrected astygmatism, say, then all the double-checking in the world isn’t going to make her a better driver; corrective lenses will.</p>
<p>
You’re getting caught up in semantics but go ahead and look up the description of the word ‘careless’ and it pretty much describes what happened here.</p>
<p>The op indicated:
</p>
<p>In other words, she didn’t exercise adequate care - i.e. was ‘careless’. That’s the meaning of that word.</p>
<p>You come across as if the drivers in these situations are mere passengers in their vehicles and being victimized by these accidents. In reality, many other drivers, including many with less experience than the D, in the exact same situation wouldn’t have been in the accident because they judged the dimensions correctly, perhaps taking extra time and care to do so, and would have looked over their shoulder, as most driver handbooks state to do, before changing lanes and and thus avoided having an accident.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thanks, GladGradDad, for pinpointing exactly what was bothering me about this thread. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until you identified it.</p>
<p>This thread took a different direction than what the OP intended it to, probably because so many posters either took issue with the method used to repay for damages, or the fact that the accidents were cause for concern.</p>
<p>I hope that the OP can make sense of all the good advice here, and find a way to fit it into her parenting style.</p>
<p>I was visiting my brother and his family. His stepdaughter came into the house vociferiously mad. She had just received a speeding ticket. My brother then said, “this is your 3rd speeding ticket in 6 months, the only person you need to be mad at is yourself.” I won’t go into the rest of it, but my sons and I looked at each other and we did all we could do to keep from bursting out in laughter.</p>