Last night I tried a different approach to our conversation. I wanted the kids to focus on what questions to ask rather than hypothesizing (which has been the focus of most of our previous conversations). To that end, I posed the following question:
"The State of Florida is trying to decide whether to allow casinos to open in the State. You are now a member of the Florida State Legislature - what do you want to know in order to decide how to cast your vote?"
The two older kids immediately jumped in with questions - "how much money would it make?", "where do they want to put the casinos?", "is there any other way to gamble in Florida?". Jamie (the 7 year old) looked at me with a blank stare. So I asked him if he knew what a legislature was. He didn't, so I asked his sister to explain. She did a great job of explaining, pointing out that the legislators were the people elected by the voters to make the laws in the state.
Armed with that information, Jamie jumped in with some questions of his own: "who will get all the money?", "is it dangerous?" and "how many people will work at the casinos?".
We continued down this path hitting on questions that covered impacts on revenues, taxes, jobs, crime and even the state's image as a family friendly state. Overall, they did a good job hitting the key questions. Unfortunately, I was not prepared with the answers to their questions so we didn't get to the next level where they would have to ask follow up questions and weigh the answers to determine their vote. Thus, I think this is an interesting approach to a conversation but next time I try it I will be more prepared.
1 comment:
Let me know if you need any back-up on deceptive advertising around gaming odds and the house-advantage.
See: http://allthebestbits.net/the-real-house-advantage/
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