Thinkfun shares an interesting series of blogs about fostering life skills in children with fun activities. Sometimes teaching children simple life skills like laundry, cooking, and money management that can be taught as early as three is sometimes overlooked in the home and in school. Having a young adult mismanaging their finances early in life is a situation that most would want to avoid at all cost.
Teaching children to understand and appreciate delaying their gratification is a foundation builder. "The famous Stanford marshmallow experiment, which involved 40 years of research, found that the children who waited longer for a larger reward were generally more successful into adulthood." What a great reason to work with your child to work towards a long term goal over short term gratification.
Work with your child on the concepts of "saving", "spending" and "sharing". Talk about the values of each of those concepts. Find fun containers, decorate and mark them clearly as save, spend, and share. Let your child decide how they want to distribute the money they receive. Discuss that saving is for larger items, spending is for fun smaller items, and sharing is giving to those who may not have as much as they do.
Next steps include, tracking how the money is saved or spent by making fun charts. Discuss the importance of making good choices and dissect the poor choices. Learn from errors and move on with the wisdom gained from mistakes. Deciding on how to spend from their "sharing jar" is a great life lesson, sharing often is accompanied by feelings of warmth of inclusivity.
Your child is not too young to be fiscally responsible and making it fun will make a life lesson easier to achieve.
For more information: Fostering Life Skills Without Home Ec: Money Management
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