Teaching a Toddler About Money

I want my daughter to have an appreciation and sense of responsibility for money.  I want to teach her that money doesn’t grown on trees and that she has to earn money. Did I mention she’s only two? This is similar to my thinking about how I don’t want my daughter thinking that the holidays are just about receiving gifts.

For Easter Reese received a couple of plastic eggs filled with coins from a family member. For months she just loved shaking the eggs and listening to the sounds. Eventually she loved putting her coins into the piggy bank. Every so often I’d give her a few coins to add to her collection and one day she said, “Mama I need more money.” Whoa! I thought Child you don’t NEED anything, especially money.

Anyway, I took this as an opportunity to teach her that she can’t just have money whenever she asks - even if at this age she has no concept of “money”…it’s not like she gets a new toy or even an extra snack every time she asks.

Money has to be earned. We’ve been working on doing clean up after playing with toys or reading books. Most of the time she cleans up just fine but it sometimes takes a while. The other day I told her she could have a few coins for her piggy bank as soon as she was done picking up her toys. She happily cleaned up as fast as she could.  It might seem like a bribe to some but my goal is that in the long run she’ll associate doing work with earning money.

I’m looking forward to when she’s a little older and her piggy bank is full and we can go to the store and she can buy her very own toy. 

What’s your take on this?

Here is a video of Reese putting coins that she earned for cleaning up all her toys into her piggy bank: