Why won't you buy this?

My eight year old daughter loves to make things. And now she wants to sell them. Her motives are great. She wants to give money to the Rehoboth Children's Home in India (which is supported by the gifts of our church). But she's baffled that people aren't leaping at the chance to pay for her pieces of art.

She is stumbling onto something really important that she'll need to wrestle with for the rest of her life. In order to participate in value exchanges, you have to provide something that people value. At this stage, her work doesn't yet meet their criteria of fine art.

The critical question for her is not Why won't you buy this? but What can I offer that solves a problem for you? At this stage in life, she is a fantastic "mother's helper," who can take competently care of younger children (while an adult is present in the home) so that the parent can get other things done - like read a book! At $3/hour, that feels like a tremendous amount of money for my daughter, and a bargain for our friends who need a breather.

With that experience under her belt (and the referrals that flow from doing a good job) she'll be ready to take on "real" babysitting jobs when she's old enough to do that. In the process she will have learned that she doesn't have to twist people's arm into buying something they don't want. She simply has to ask what she can do or provide that others will gladly pay for. After all, that's what most artists do while they refine their craft such that people gladly want to pay for their art.