Teaching toddlers about money

It is something that I have always thought about, right from when I didn’t have children. How would I make sure my children grow up to respect money and “earn” it as well. I didn’t really get regular pocket money growing up, but for one stage I did get pocket money when I completed a list of chores.

One of my earliest memories from when I was a child, was spending my Saturday’s with my brother and Grandad. He was a very routined man, very practical and he taught me a lot of things. One of which the element of money; the fact that money has a limit (most of the time) and that you must spend within your means. Every saturday he would let me and my brother have £2, we must have been a bout 6/3 and he would take us into town to Woolworths usually. We would have our £2 each Saturday that we could spend on what we wanted, we had the choice, the entire shop was open for us to buy what we wanted. My brother would usually buy a matchstick car or two, or he would buy a matchstick car and a packet of pick and mix sweets. I would nearly always buy a little dolly, or something I could colour in and a packet of pick and mix. I think back then £2 went quite a lot further then it would nowadays, but sometimes I couldn’t have exactly what I wanted because I didn’t have enough money. He would never budge! He would always make sure we had no more than £2 and he helped us calculate and work out what we could afford and the decision, in the end, was down to us with what we wanted to buy.

The reason the lessons Grandad taught me stuck with me is because Grandad would help us, he would let us make the decisions and he would not budge. So there was no moving him to £2.50! Which is good. I fear sometimes that we are lenient with Noah over things like this and it will not help him in the long run as he will learn that he can negotiate more and more. We are starting to give Noah pocket money for helping us with the chores. Daddy gives him 50p and we explain to him that he can put it into a pot and save it up to buy a big car or a new book. He puts it in his pot and does appear to be quite excited about it.

We did get the children a til for Christmas which came with some pretend money, they have the concept of the “til” as when they play shops they ring the products through the til and even beep. They hand over money to eachother and Noah will put it in to the til. They get practice from watching what the cashiers do at the shops, when we take the children shopping with us. They are learning all the time through day to day activities and play. As Isla gets older we will make pocket money a regular thing and I will start to do with them what my Grandad did with me. It made me feel special and I want my little ones to feel that too.