The money. They say we could live without him, but it would make our lives very complicated. It is very likely that it is one of the objects that we cross the most throughout the day, whether in coins, bills or simply as a concept. How many times we think of him throughout the day ... It's something ubiquitous in our lives.
We take our children to stores with us, we buy them gifts or else we tell them that we don't have "money." But what do our children understand? How to explain a concept so common and at the same time so complex to explain?
"You have no money? Do more"
I am sure that many of us have been given an answer like this when we have told them the very helpful phrase: "No honey, we cannot buy it, we have no money." In the case of my son, his response was And why don't you do more?
We acquire things and in return we deliver some metallic tokens, a piece of paper or pass a plastic card through a machine. When we talk about gifts, everything has an associated number, a value, 10, 20, 5.59, euros, cents, dollars ... For many it is what gives meaning to their day to day, which gives a value to things, A position on our personal scale. For the world of adults everything must have a price because that is how we understand the world, but for the little ones, the price does not exist and it is something that costs to learn.
And although it is something for us every day, something intrinsic to our lives as adults, for our children it is a whole new world. They have been watching him all his life: dad or mom are taking things from the shelves, things that we don't like, others that we don't care about, our favorite cookies (finally) and just before leaving he gives the things we have taken to a girl or a boy who passes them by a machine, when he finishes he says a number and mom or dad gives him some bills from his wallet or passes a plastic card (which he never lets me take it) through a machine and we go.
This is what in the eyes of a child is a day at the supermarket. Little by little he will ask and know that things "you have to pay them", another strange concept of the world of the elderly and once they are paid, they become ours. It is still curious that this system of "I want something, I buy it" don't be something that has triumphed among the smallest, most friends of the "I want something, I keep it", but as they grow they introduce it naturally both in their vocabulary and in their day to day, even reaching their games.
Hard to understand concepts
Many times we have seen how in relation to money our children will go for the size or even for that currency they like best, because for them the concept of "value"or"quantity"It is not yet settled. Until very recently, my children did not understand how a coin, for example € 2, could be equivalent to two one-euro coins and thus preferred that you give them 5 coins of 10 cents instead of just one euro.
Nor did they understand why a 50 cent coin was bigger than a euro, if less things could be bought with it and we no longer talk when I explained that one euro coin was two 50 cent coins. So we leave for later the different types of currencies (now with 8 years they get it).
Where does the money come from? How is it made? Is there a tree that gives bills? You have many coins, have you found a treasure chest? They are an example of some of the questions that can be asked and that give us an idea of how simple the world is for them (and how good it would be if it were so)
The importance of understanding the concept of the value of things
Mom, dad, I want cookies. Buy me cookies. Do we have money to buy cookies? There are three intervals in the lives of our children that sooner or later end up assimilating, From the initial I want something and I ask for it, until we evolve to concepts such as buying, lending, money and the value of things.
How many times have our children asked us for something and after buying it they have barely paid attention to it? They have too many things, it is what our elders say and perhaps in many cases it is true, but the problem is not in having many or few things, but the value that we give to each one.
But how to teach what things are worth? It is clear that we are not going to put them to work so that they earn their own money and so they can buy their own things, but if we can make them understand that not all children have everything they want, that things cost money and that money It is hard to win.
We can teach them with equivalences: One toy is X packages of stickers or how many toys could have been bought with what we have spent on the purchase.
Give them money a month to administer. It is clear that the child here has to know how to add and subtract, we can give him a small amount of money that he can spend throughout the month on whatever he wants. How many more things you buy, before you run out of money and can not buy new things. In this way they learn that money is not infinite and that there are things that have preference over others.
Teach through the game
Of course, playing will always be the best way to learn, along with the observation itself.
The shopping cart: For example, be the case we have previously proposed. We may not want to give our children money to be the ones who manage it, but what we can do is that they are the ones who calculate the monthly shopping basket. That is, we can tell you that we have a budget of X euros to spend in the supermarket this month. Every time we go shopping, they will accompany us and will calculate what it will cost us what we are putting in the car, even if we want to complicate it more we can make a "real" and a "hypothetical" purchase in which they put Whatever they want, once we have paid they will calculate what we have left for the following purchases, as well as the difference in the sum of the purchase we have made and their purchase.
The monopoly: one of the most widespread board games worldwide. There are countless formats, from the simple Junior monopoly to the more complex ones that already incorporate credit cards. At home we have the junior and the truth is that it has not cost them much to understand their dynamics and the handling of the amounts to pay or receive. We can adapt it more to reality with simple changes in the rules.
Talk to them or watch, whenever possible, documentaries or programs from other types of cultures than ours, how they live, what things, what they eat, etc. We can even tell you about our childhood, about what we had and in case of those who have grandparents they could tell how their life was and thus compare the differences between the three generations and see that for example there are two of them that have grown up without mobiles and no tablets and nothing happened to them.
