Thursday, February 7, 2008

Teaching Children, Part 8: Parental ATM?

Part eight in our series on teaching children about money...

Through example and practice, my parents taught me that their money is theirs and my money is mine. Not that they never shared, but our home was certainly not run on the Communist ideal of community property. :-)

It shocked me when I began to realize that some kids routinely asked their parents for money and got it just like that, with no effort on their part. I was always under the impression that money was something to be earned, payment for a job done. And in our family, it was.

If I wanted to buy something, I had ways of earning money--but it was earned, not doled out without personal investment.

I'm grateful that my parents ingrained in me that money is to be earned, not something I am entitled to by virtue of being human, cute, or their kid. :-)

1 comments:

Emily said...

You are SO right! That's exactly how I was raised, too. Asking my parents for money was out of the question. They bought things for us, but we NEVER asked them for money.

My husband is a youth pastor and I'm SO surprised at how parents simply hand out money to their kids like it's nothing. I think that that was how my husband was raised and he didn't benefit much by it.