It was my first day in a new position as the Home/School Specialist in a school system in a small community in Kansas. I would be working with students in grades K-12. My task for the day was to introduce myself to the various classes and explain what I would be doing. Not only was I new to the school, the position was new. As I pondered how to describe to 2nd graders what a social worker does, I found myself saying, “I help people make change.” The parallel in the phrase “make change” as it applies to the financial world and the social/emotional world got big to me as I continued to explore it.
When we ask someone for change in the financial world, the first things to be established are how much change and what kind? That information determines the answer to the request. If quarters are needed and I only have dimes and nickels, the answer is “no”. If $2.00 is needed and I only have enough for $1.00, the answer is “no”. Another parallel I saw was the result of the exchange. If someone gives me $1.00 and I give them $.75 in return, they will feel cheated. If I give $1.25 in exchange for $1.00, they will probably feel rewarded. When we are asking for change in the financial world we are not expecting to be given more or less than we had at the beginning, we are expecting to receive the exact amount we had but in a more spendable form, a form that fits the machine we want to access.

It is the same in the social/emotional world. The first determination is whether the exchanger has the resources needed in the form needed to make the exchange. The exchangee can expect to receive their resources returned in the same quantity they originally had, but in a more spendable form, a form that fits the machine of life they are accessing. If they happen to get more back than they gave, they will feel rewarded.
This way of framing “what I do” has been useful over the years. I am always responsible for assessing my own resources before agreeing to “make change”, I do not expect to be given something that was not given to me by the exchangee, I must know what machine of life we are accessing, and I always want to be able to give more than was expected in the exchange.
So, when my grandchildren ask, “What do you do when you are in this office?” (as they already have), I can say “I help people make change” and open the door for a discussion of what making change means, for they will have lots of changes of their own to make in life. I want them to know it is not a scary process in which they have to come up with something they do not already have or lose something they are fond of, but that they will have all they started with, and it will be more spendable, and there may even be a little extra.