Teaching Kids About Debt
July 21st, 2008
As I was searching for something to write about today, I came across an entry on Earnest Parenting about a Mom trying to teach one of her young sons the importance of paying off “his debt.”
Well, really she had lent him a few dollars to buy some baseball cards he wanted with the condition that he would pay her back through chores later that week. But her son, like most kids and sadly many grown ups too, thought of every possible excuse for why he thought he shouldn’t have to pay her back; including, “My friends wouldn’t make me work to pay back the money if I borrowed from them,” and how he shouldn’t have to work on Labor Day, etc.
The funny thing is that many parents neglect to teach this lesson, maybe because they were never taught it either growing up, but the fact is that the sooner you teach this important life lesson to your child the less time they will spend making up excuses for why the the world is so unfair.
Many things in life are hard to understand without experiencing them first. Really that’s what childhood is all about. Creating opportunities and situations that let children experience and practice how to handle everyday dilemmas, like paying someone back or if it is even worth borrowing in the first place, will do wonders for them in the future.
Posted in Family
One Response to “Teaching Kids About Debt”
By AmyL on Jul 21, 2008
Wow, thank you very much for the acknowledgment! It’s true about parents not teaching the debt lesson because they haven’t been taught themselves. My own parents didn’t discuss it much really. I learned through trial and error, and benefited greatly from going through the Dave Ramsey program.