Teaching a Child the Meaning of Money

The other night when we checked on Carolyn after she had gone to bed, we found that she had unwrapped and stuck about 15 bandaids to her arm. She was half asleep, but still very proud of herself. I said something like, "That was very wasteful." And then I must have said something like, "You have to use band-aids more sparingly because we do not have enough money to buy that many bandaids." Her quick response was that she had money in her piggy bank and that she would buy some new band-aids. True to form, not forgetting a thing, Carolyn woke up the next morning remembering every detail of that late-night conversation. She put the empty box of band-aids and her piggy bank into her purse, and asked if we could go to the store, so she could buy some new band-aids. We went to Rite Aid that morning. She thought about getting the princess band-aids or maybe the ones with Buzz Lightyear and Woody, but ultimately settled on the Mickey-Mouse band-aids. She had to use her own money to buy them. When she was pulling out the money from her piggy bank, she even told the salesperson that she "wasted the old band-aids." Now, she hesitates using them because she thinks they are very special. She also asked how she can get more money for her piggy bank, in case she needs to buy anything else.

After we picked out the band-aids, we walked through the store. She wanted to buy a card because she saw that it had the word "mommy" on it .... but when I showed her how much money from her piggy bank that it would cost, she put it back. Instead, she decided to buy a bag of M&Ms. She gave one M&M to daddy, one to mommy, two to herself, and asked me to save the rest for later ..... because "they are very special. I bought them with 'collar' bills from my piggy bank."

I do not think she understood how much money her band-aids cost ($5.29 for that silly box, by the way!), but she knows that they are very valuable because she had to part with money from her own bank.