In our generation, there is basically no financial and business enlightenment. Most of our parents, most of whom were born in the years of famine, experienced poverty as children, caught up with reform and opening up after work, and thus lived a worry-free life.
Many people treat money as a province, not to mention what financial and business enlightenment. Therefore, our generation is more or less narrow in its treatment of "financial quotients."
Financial and business enlightenment, can not one-sidedly pay attention to teaching children to make money, save money, nor just teach children to understand what money is and what money can be used for. The core of financial and business enlightenment is to let children correctly view the resource of "money" and make reasonable use of it as a tool to achieve their life goals.
So, how to carry out financial enlightenment?
The first step, of course, is to experience it — to experience the joy of spending money, to experience how good it is to have money, to experience that I want to be rich.
And this experience does not have to wait until the child is 5 years old, 6 years old, or even from 1 year old.
0-2 years old
Experience the process of shopping
Understand the buying and selling process
Babies of this age are not going to meet money eyes, and things like banknotes are not attractive to them.
I clearly remember the anger and grievances that my brother showed when he took the money from me during the Spring Festival when he was two years old: Does the baby want money? Babies want cakes! He doesn't understand what money is for, and he doesn't know how much it costs to go to the supermarket and buy his favorite loaves.
I can't count how many times he rushed into the supermarket to pick up an object, and he was about to dismantle and eat it on the spot, and as soon as I said that I had finished paying, he immediately staged a heart-wrenching crying drama that could not be integrated into human society...
Mom said she had to pay to eat the fruit puree,
So he began to lay on the ground to sprinkle his brother
This made me suddenly realize that I really didn't spend so little time with my brother, so little that I couldn't even take him to the supermarket to buy things, so that he didn't know that he had to pay for things at the age of 21 months!
In contrast, my brother's shopping experience when he was a child was much richer, and every day on the way home from kindergarten, he stopped by the supermarket to buy ingredients for the next day.
His favorite thing to do is to push the children in front of the supermarket to shop, and the car is familiar with the road to carry his favorite food on the familiar shelves.
Then push the trolley to the cash register, tiptoe the contents of the shopping cart, lift it over your head with difficulty, put it on the conveyor belt, and then push the trolley to the outside of the cash register. While waiting for my mother to pay, I put the goods swept by the cashier into my own shopping bag. After this set of actions is completed, there will be a clamor to take out the bread you just bought to eat.
My 17-month-old brother pushed his children's shopping cart on his way to checkout
Shopping pays, it is natural, I have never been like teaching my brother, hard to instill in my brother "to buy things is to pay" this golden rule, but he has naturally got this truth in the shopping experience again and again, but also experienced all the processes of checkout, cashiering, buying, selling.
Money can be exchanged for what you need, bread, lollipops, toys, so that children can experience this, is the first step in the enlightenment of financial business.
Toys/picture books recommended
In addition to taking children to experience real shopping, there are some toys at home, which are quite suitable for experiencing the "shopping process" with children at home.
Ice cream stalls like this are very interesting, and in the process of going home, you can basically experience the whole process of exchanging money for snacks. Young babies, don't care about the denomination of money -
There is also a cash register toy, octopus mother bought one, dozens of dollars, children play up very much, there are some with shopping guide sounds, will remind you to swipe the card, find change, the real simulation of supermarket shopping scene -
Finally, recommend a set of financial business picture books "Bigfoot and Golden Egg Eggs", which is a set of financial business enlightenment picture books that young babies can also read, recommended by octopus mother, and children especially like it.
Bigfoots from places where there is no "money", and very young golden eggs, because they do not understand the common sense of equal exchange and commodity circulation, have made a lot of jokes, and they have also seen various problems in other people's consumption. For example, when shopping in the supermarket, monkeys throw goods, and kangaroos put unpaid goods into their nursery bags...
Each story is lighthearted and humorous, allowing children to easily get some ideas of financial quotient.
3-5 years old
Distinguish between wants and needs
Experience the trade-offs of desire
Understand making money and saving money
1. Distinguish between wants and needs
It is not an easy task to let children shop on their own – if the shopping cart does not fit, they may empty the entire supermarket. Before the baby was three years old, the most common conversation we had in the supermarket was often like this:
Eva: "Mom, I want to buy this little car!" ”
Me: "I have this kind of car at home, I don't need to buy it anymore"
Eva: "But I want to!" ”
Me: "You see, this one is no different from the one at home, and it's expensive..."
Eva: "But I still want to..."
Me: "Then you give me a reason to buy it"
Eva: "Because I want to!" ”
Mom pawn.
You have to reason with him, and he talks to you about what he wants. Baby is also confused - isn't it enough to want? If you don't buy what you want, do you want to buy what you don't want? The adult world is strange!
As an adult, I'm sorry, but it's true that this is the case: a lot of things are not what you want, you can want, we need to deal with our own desires.
So, how do you explain the difference between "need" and "want" to a three-year-old?
Of course, from daily life, it is necessary to provoke children to think - what things are inseparable from people's lives? What do we have to do every day?
For example, we have to eat every day, otherwise we will starve to death, so whenever there is no rice at home, we have to buy rice, which is "needed"; but in addition to eating, you will also eat snacks, snacks are delicious but unhealthy, can not be used to replace staple foods, this is "want".
What is "needed" is what is necessary to survive, and what is "wanted" is to get something that can make people happy, but without it will not affect the survival of things. The Children's Academy has previously explained this concept in detail in a special tweet, and also provided some electronic versions of the courseware in the United States to teach children to distinguish between Needs & Wants from an early age, which also taught me an important lesson!
But then again, the child still can't understand why he can't buy toys when he buys bread? I want it all, why not?
Of course, all, the coolest! At this time, it is important to consider, do you have enough money? And, are you sure you really want it? When the budget is limited, you can only buy what you need most, and other things you want, and then slowly consider it when you have enough money.
When will there be enough money? At this time, you can try to let the child understand "saving money" and "making money".
2. Experience making money and saving money on your own
Under the mood of limited budget, the desire to want cannot be satisfied. How to determine this budget?
Smart moms and dads say they shift the pressure of their budgets to themselves. Mom and Dad are only responsible for providing your necessities, and everything else you "want" you have to find a way to earn it yourself.
Before the child is six years old, our family has not officially given the child pocket money, but they can earn business income by selling toys they don't want, and learn to save points for goods.
The latter is a typical "external incentive", although some people criticize this incentive method may crush the "internal drive" and make the child feel that learning is just a reward, but in fact, many times, in the face of a boring task, such as repeatedly practicing the same song, it is entirely possible to help get started and promote the formation of habits through appropriate external incentives.
When our eldest brother began to learn to read at the age of four and a half, there was a very painful process, and he felt that it was too difficult to recognize words, and the baby could not remember anything.
After several competitions, I still failed to arouse his enthusiasm for word recognition, and finally I decided to introduce a point incentive system: you can get a small star every day to complete the recognition goal, and if you only save ten stars, you can exchange for an ice cream (or equivalent). In this way, it is equivalent to opening a small door for him to eat ice cream, but at the same time maintaining moderation.
Most importantly, this external incentive did help him cross the most difficult entry stage, and when he mastered a certain amount of literacy and began to find a sense of accomplishment in reading, we abolished this exchange mechanism, and it did not affect his interest in literacy at all, even more active than before.
The four-and-a-half-year-old brother took a group photo with the little star he won for the first time
When the older ones started to learn piano, there was also a long period of painful run-in, and we once again introduced the incentive mechanism of saving points for gifts.
At this time, the eldest brother has become much more mature, and after exchanging the weekly points for small gifts worth less than 5 euros, he offered to propose: "I don't change the gifts this week, save the points, in a few weeks, won't I be able to change a bigger gift?" ”
The skill of saving money is a good idea!
Children aged 3 to 5 can also understand what money is, the process of shopping and trading, how to make money, etc. through picture books and board games. Here I recommend a few:
1. The picture book "Little Rabbit Learns to Spend Money" is suitable for 3-year-old + children
This is a set of best-selling overseas financial and business enlightenment education picture books, with the little rabbit as the protagonist, through 4 stories close to life, teach children to understand money, understand the value of money, explore the concept of income, expenditure, savings, investment, etc., the painting style is also very simple and cute.
2. Board game "Frank's Fish Shop"
A very cleverly designed puzzle board game, but also very creative fishing games and buy fish, sell fish financial enlightenment pretend game perfectly combined, so that 1-10 years old children can find fun from it, and get different abilities to exercise.
3. Board game "Super Farmer", suitable for 5 years old +
This is a wealth board game of an agricultural society, the theme and illustration design is interesting, the rules are relatively simple, and it is very suitable for children to play.
Children have to think about how to expand their farms to make more money – find ways to breed animals and sell them back for more kinds of animals when appropriate. At the same time, it is also necessary to invest in the purchase of sheepdogs to prevent risks.
For investment ideas (scale, efficiency, etc.), as well as risk awareness, it is a kind of enlightenment.
Well, space limitations, preschool sharing about spending money experience, first ended. In the future, I will also share some of the experience of financial enlightenment in more detail.