Ishaan's fascination for coins

Ishaan loves coins and money. The moment he sees any coin or money, his eyes glow and he has a wide smile ! Not sure why - may be because we started giving them coins for getting them to follow the routine during crazy morning hours...

Earlier, if we gave him coins, he only cared about the number of coins.. not the value. So, if we gave him 10 pennies, he would be happy. But instead if we gave him 2 nickles, he would be upset that he only got 2 coins. But now, he understands that 2 nickles is 5+5=10 cents. Kid is getting smarter..

We used this fascination to get him to like hiking. Last year, he wouldn't want to walk at all when we went for hiking. But then recently, we started throwing pennies every 5 minutes or so on the trail and help him find them to keep him going. He thinks that God throws them for him and looks forward to hiking. Even at the Spring Program at his school, he announced "Hi ! My name is Ishaan and I like to go hiking." :)

I also offered him 10 cents if he slept in his own bed the whole night. It worked for couple of days mostly because he was so tired that he didn't wake up at night. But the 3rd night, he came to sleep with me in the middle of night and while he was settling down, he asked "Mommy, will you still give me 10 cents in the morning?" :)

Good or not, bribing him with few cents to get something done is working like a charm right now. If we forget to give him coins that we promised for certain thing, he remembers and doesn't let it go till we actually give it to him. He goes and put them in his piggy bank.

We have recently introduced the concept of putting money in a real bank where you can earn interest to him and Kavya. He is very fascinated by that since we told them that we will match whatever money/savings they put in the bank account :)

Value of Money

Often times I find myself struggling, trying to figure out how to teach the value of money to kids these days ? There is so much abundance - too  many pencils, erasers, toys, electronic devices, etc .. that I feel they don't understand that all these cost money and that parents are working hard for that. They just take everything for granted. If something breaks or gets lost, they are very quick to say that its OK, we will buy new one.

Here is another example .. Kavya buys lunch from school twice a week - Mondays when they have PBJ and Thursdays when they have cheese pizza. The other days they usually don't have good vegetarian choices. The lunch costs about 3$. The other days I give her lunch from home. One or two times a week, I give her indian food like roti-shaak burrito .. and she definitely prefers the junk pizza, etc over it. This week, they had grilled cheese on Friday in the menu. So, she wanted to buy lunch from school on Friday too. I didn't want her to get into a habit of buying from school whenever they had her favorite food. So, I told her that you can buy twice a week. If you want to buy on Friday, you take lunch from home on Thursday (instead of pizza at school). However, she wanted both. So, I explained her in terms of money. I told her that we spend $6 every week for your lunch from school. So, you have to manage within that. That is your budget. She was quick to respond that if she buys on Friday too, it will be "only" $9 for that week and that is not too much. Gaurav and I struggled for a few mins after that to explain her that $9 is too much .. It will take her over an hour of hard work to earn that. Even then, I don't think she got it. ** Sigh **