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What would you tell your kid if you were being foreclosed on

What would you tell your kid if you were being foreclosed on

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I may have mentioned once or twice that we bought a house.  A house a realtor would say "needs some TLC," which is really code for "will require more hours of back-breaking labor than you can possibly imagine."  I seriously spent seven hours on my hands a knees this Sunday scraping paint splatters and peanut butter and ketchup and gum and jelly and heaven-knows-what-else off the floors.  And that was just to clean BEFORE we could start renovations.  The only thing worse than cleaning up your own messes is cleaning up someone elses!

Photo by Niall Kennedy via Flikr

Its not a surprise, though.  Since Nevadas topped most foreclosure ranking lists for the past couple years, there are an awful lot of houses like ours out there.  In fact, this house and all the work it needs remind me an awful lot of our first house, which was also a bank-owned foreclosure when we bought it.

Foreclosures have become so common that they have just started to feel like a fact of life. Until this weekend.

I was outside washing out a bucket, and the little second-grade girl who lives next door came over to introduce herself.  She used to be best friends with the little girl who lived in our house.  They used to have sleepovers, hang out in the hot tub, feed the fish in the fish pond.  And she told me, "Yeah, the bank took my friends house away and made her move to a different town."

All the sudden, I had a window into the very real heartache that people - mothers, fathers, spouses, children - go through on the other side of the foreclosure process.  Of course, I have no way of knowing exactly what  the former owners of our house told their children about what was happening, but filtered down through the mouths of eight-year-olds, the reality had a very clear villain: the big bad bank.

Now, Im sure as heck not excusing the banks or the role they played in this financial mess our country found ourselves in; Im more than familiar with the shady lending practices and sometimes outright lies.  But they werent the only ones to blame, either.  Realtors and investors convinced people (and often themselves) that there was nowhere to go but up forever. People borrowed more money than they should and signed up for loans they didnt understand.   And the reality when you borrow money is that if you dont pay it back, you dont own what you bought.

I pray that Im never in a position where I have to explain to my child why our home is being foreclosed on, but its something thousands of families in my community have undoubtedly done. And it got me thinking, what would I say to my son?  I hope Id tell the truth: That mom and dad cant afford to make the payments on the house, so we cant live there any more. Or maybe Id be a big enough person to use it as a teachable moment about borrowing money and using credit.  But maybe I wouldnt be.  Maybe Id be angry or depressed or embarrassed, and Id find someone to blame.  Maybe Id paint my own picture of the villain.

One thing is clear, though.  At least here in Nevada, I think there will be a whole generation of kids whose lives have been changed by the big bad banks, whether through personal experience or something they heard from a friend.  I wonder what that will mean to them when theyre adults.

What do you think?  How would you explain to a child what foreclosure is?

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