Money has become an important necessity in our modern lives nowadays. Is it important to nurture our child’s concept of money? Most parents work hard to provide the comfortable life for their family. They just provide money to their children to spend without nurture the concept of money. When they grow up, they are used to take or receive money from their parents, they become dependent and lack of financial responsibilities. That is very common in our society right now! Whenever I take my nephews out to a shopping mall and they spot something that they want to buy, they will ask me to buy for them. If I tell them that I have no cash, they will say, “You have credit card. You can use your credit card first and pay later.”.

Concept of money is not taught in school as well. Therefore, parents have to make the extra effort to nurture their child the right mindset about money during the early childhood period. At early age, children are able to absorb any information that we can give. This is the best time to teach them the ideas of money and cultivate good money management skills.

If we don’t start educating our child about money, they will not understand the real meaning of money. All they know is daddy or mommy will give them money to buy anything they want e.g. toys, dolls, playstation, accessories etc. They have a misconception of money as they are brought up to spend money for fun and pleasure. The more parents indulge their children with all the material satisfaction, their children are not given the opportunity to experience financial responsibility.

The concept of money that we can nurture at young age includes how money works in real life (e.g. buying and selling); how to manage and plan our financial include savings, managing cash flow and budgeting. It can be introduced via activities and games according to the level of development of our child. We are able to strengthen the family values such as family responsibilities and communication when all family members involve in the activities and games. Besides that, we can cultivate some social responsibilities by using money to help the poor such as charity and donation.

As a start, we can get the children to make their own coin box using recycle materials such as box or mineral water bottle rather than buy a piggy bank from the shopping mall. Allow the children use their own creativity to decorate their own coin box. Prepare color papers, glue, water color and brushes, other recycle accessories such as shells, sequins etc. Remember to help your child cut a small rectangle hole for coin or notes insertion. When the coin box is fulled, we can take the child to the bank to open up a savings account. Allow him to observe the transaction as well as short conversation with bank teller/officer about the importance of savings.

We can also reinforce mathematic concepts such as counting, addition and subtraction by using coins and notes. Before making purchases in a grocery shop, prepare a list of things that you need to purchase. Make a price list for grocery items that may stick on the refrigerator. Get your child to write down the price referring to the price list on the side of the items that you intend to buy. Let him calculate the total amount of money that you need to spend (addition). Tell him the budget that you allocate for the purchase. Discuss together what are the items that you might need to cancel from the list if the amount spend is exceeding budget (subtraction). Once settle, do the shopping together. Your child is involved in financial planning for the family and decision making which is important in promoting self-confident and independent and responsibility.

If you have interesting activities that we can use to nurture our child’s concept of money, please do share with me and others in the comment.

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