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Today, my 5-year-old son Egor for the first time fully chose and bought a board game for himself, but I acted only as a courier. The game «King of Tokyo» cost 1600r, and he honestly earned it by going to «work».
This experiment is already 1,5 years old. It began with the fact that the son was sick a lot, and could not get used to the kindergarten. We, as two adults, made an agreement with him: for every day when he goes to the kindergarten cheerfully and with a song, tries to play with other children there, and the teachers do not complain about him, he receives a salary of 100 rubles! Moreover, it is obligatory with one bill (he counts them not by money, but by pieces). It’s his and his money alone, and he can do whatever he wants with it.
Most often, of course, he wants toys. And then the work was carried out, it was explained that there are toys «in use, which were bought by mom or dad» and toys «your personal, which you bought yourself.»
a) Toys in use “like Yegor”: he can play with them, but at the same time, his parents will scold him if he tries to deliberately spoil them, or carries them to the playground and leaves them unattended, or decides to change very unprofitable. Parents may ask “what do you want”, or they may not ask, they can buy what the child has chosen, or they can buy what they consider more correct.
b) Toys «I bought myself.» Parents only make sure that the thing does not harm the child. Wants garbage for a lot of money that will break in a day? Has the right to! Do you want to buy 30 kinder surprises? Has the right to! Want to break a toy, throw it away, exchange it? This is his right! The only thing is that Yegor has money at home, in a jar, and he will not buy anything spontaneously. You have to go home, take the money, and only then go buy.
The thing worked. The child very quickly learned that a strong toy is more profitable than a flimsy, but cheaper one. He does not buy Kinder surprises and does not even ask us, because for his money they seemed unprofitable to him. Money is accumulated for a long time and only then spent. He used to buy all sorts of dinosaurs and machines, and now he has matured into a board game that he saw with friends.
By the way, somewhere before the new year, he already realized that it was more profitable to ask dad or mom to look for a game on Avito or Ali-express and wait for two weeks than to shout “I want this toy right away” with a tremor in my voice. This is 1,5 times cheaper, and when it is HIS money, he appreciates it very much.
There was a bottleneck, this is when he began to appreciate money in itself, to accumulate uncontrollably. But we worked with him, shifted the assemblage point, and now he appreciates the freedom that money and opportunities give him, and not by themselves.
He also developed a taste for gifts. Sometimes he says he wants to «treat us with pomelo» (fruit). He takes his grandmother or dad by the hand, leads him to five, chooses a broomstick, pays for it himself, drags him home himself, asks for help with cutting, and then, with an indescribable sense of dignity, distributes how much to whom. True, he leaves 60 percent for himself, but the remaining 40% work clearly according to the love language “gift”.
He also learned that money is life. This is when my mother got sick, we went to the pharmacy together, and I bought medicines. He saw me paying and asked what we had bought. I said that I spent money on medicines for my mother so that she would recover. We bought them, and now mom will feel better. Yegor changed his face and said that if medicines were still needed, he would give all the money that he had so that his mother would recover. And since then, he began to value money even more, because now it’s not some kind of toys, or a visit to Divo Island, or food — this is MOTHER’S LIFE! And for a child, mother is the whole universe.
By the way, now it has become much easier to deal with his hooliganism. If persuasion does not help, then it is enough to say «Egor, the repair will be at your expense.» Usually this is enough to make his games much less damaging to furniture and walls. But occasionally you get the answer «I really want, I’ll pay.» And then there is nothing to do, we, it turns out, have concluded an oral agreement, and he has the right to spoil what he wants at his own expense.
Now let’s move on to the piece-bonus system of remuneration. Yegor made a cool rocket here, for which he received a certificate in kindergarten, and at home he was waiting for a bonus of + 200 rubles. Now he’s mulling over the idea that instead of just going to work, you can do something WOW and get three times as much as you normally would in a day.