My two kids know that I watch sports. They are 7 and 9. Thankfully they are quite smart. As a result they seem to have a hunch that I, sometimes (errr!!! all the time), do more than just watch.
So here's the scenario: I've been getting into horse racing and enjoying it a great deal. My kids have been watching and liking it too. For the Kentucky Derby and Preakness I printed out lists of the horses and let my kids pick two each. I then bet on them. My daughter picked California Chrome both times and won. My son picked losers. I told my daughter that she could go to Sea World Summer Camp with the money from both races. Now they want to watch horses and try to pick winners. I've explained to them that losing is much more common than winning and over the long haul most people lose money (and sometimes a lot more).
Now to today... I turned on the Miami/Chicago baseball game. A few minutes later I flipped to TVG and caught race #5 at Golden Gate. My kids showed some interest so like before, I let them pick one horse each. My son picked Blazing Spice. My daughter picked Urgraceisenough. I bet 5.00 across the board for both horses. My son's horse ended up winning the race and the initial investment of 15.00 turned into 237.50.
My son has been wanting to go to the Blue Man Group show for a while now. I told him that we could go. Now, this may seem stupid, but I really don't think they are correlating gambling on horses with an easy way to getting things but maybe I'm wrong. My wife seems to think so. (If I might add, she dislikes any/all kinds of betting immensely.)
How do you see it? Am I just short of the devil for letting them pick horses/involving them?