The Million-Dollar Kid Government figures put the total cost of raising a child at $279,000, but some increasingly common expenses can send the number soaring over $1 million. By EILEEN DASPIN and ELLEN GAMERMAN"Irene Smith, an attorney and property manager in San Jose, Calif., has … decided the most important thing for [7-year-old] Amelia's future success is fluency in Spanish. To that end, Ms. Smith transferred Amelia from public school to a $13,500-a-year private academy where Spanish is taught daily. She also signed her up for a $900 weekly class with Berlitz, hired a private tutor, and has taken Amelia out of school for up to two months at a time to travel to Costa Rica and Mexico to perfect her foreign-language skills."
Considering that the San Jose Unified School District is 51% Latino, I would suspect there are cheaper ways… I guess that Ms. Smith wants little Amelia to learn Spanish so she can make enough money when she grows up to be able to afford to insulate her daughter from all the Latinos in San Jose, and so on and on until the family eventually dies out from the expense of insulating their children.
"Rebecca Young, a musician in Seattle, recently enrolled her 6-year-old daughter, Eva, in a $150, five-hour course on Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Though Ms. Young had her doubts about the Early Masters program, by the end of the weeklong class, Eva could discuss Ms. Kahlo's painting style, place her in the context of art history and do a decent job copying her work."On the last day of class, Eva asked to wear a Mexican-style dress and used Ms. Young's makeup to draw a thick, single eyebrow across her forehead, one of Ms. Kahlo's signature features. She even asked for lipstick to smear on her dress to look like blood — a prominent detail in Kahlo self-portraits."
Perhaps, little Eva learned to copy one of Frida's last paintings, "Stalin and I," which the loyal Stalinist painted despite having slept with Trotsky shortly before Stalin murdered him. Or how about "Little Deer," in which Frida painted her face on a stag that has been pierced, like a four-legged St. Sebastian, by nine arrows, which represent her husband Diego Rivera's nine most intolerable infidelities, such as sleeping with Frida's sister?
