Photo: wootam / Flickr

Children are the purest manifestation of one of the most inate human traits – we have unlimited wants, and if we could just ask for things like a fairy godmother would make it happen, we would. The world doesn’t work how children see it, though, and so it is the parent’s job to teach children about the value of hard work, and how it relates to money.

The ABCs of money

At the core, you want children to know that money is earned, not given. And the best way to explain that is by explaining to children that they must make something someone else wants enough to want to pay for it. Help them understand that someone who wants your child’s money makes those sweets they love so, so she can buy something from someone else. Now explain the reverse of that

There are various games you can play with different colour candy, or even a mixture of sweets for it to make sense. If you really want to ramp up complexity, and express why people need to buy different products from other people, consider mixing up pieces from different puzzles, and forcing everyone to trade if they want to assemble the whole picture. In many ways, this will help ‘click’ how the economy really works.

On work ethic

Once children have the fundamental understanding of how money works, it is now your responsibility to teach them why they should work really hard, and value working really hard for it, too. This step in teaching children about money involves explaining how to amass a great deal of money by making a lot of that thing other people are prepared to pay money for. This way your child can get every sweet – or toy – under the sun because they have enough money to do so.

Trust your children – even though this may seem too complex for kids to grasp, the average five year old can understand most any concept if you explain it in easily understandable terms.

This is important

Teaching kids about money is fundamental training that should not be left to the world. ‘Go to school, work hard, get good grades and get a good job’ is the worst advise you could give your child in this day an age – teach them how the economic system actually works and how to manipulate it to their advantage.

This is the first in a series of posts on parents teaching children about money. We’d love to hear any feedback you may have.

Tags: children, money, work ethic