My wife and I have started homeschooling our 4-year old daughter this school year (Update: She’s already finishing her 4th Grade this summer 2020, amidst the COVID19 pandemic).
I personally know some friends who have been homeschooling their kids and it’s just amazing to see how strong their family bondings are because of this method of teaching and learning.
One more reason why we want to homeschool our daughter is because we believe that personal finance is one of the least taught subjects in the Philippines (and elsewhere). Money is a very important subject for a child to learn and bring the knowledge along until he/she becomes an adult. And since my wife and I are both staunch advocates of financial literacy, we thought why not teach our child about money ourselves.
Through the homeschooling system, parents like us won’t have to spend so much time giving lectures to our children. We just have to show them how we value money in our everyday lives.
Are We Sending The Wrong Message about Money to our Kids?
Our young daughter is a great singer. No doubt about it. I should know, I’m a singer and a songwriter. 😛 It’s just amazing how she can easily memorize the lyrics and the music and mimic the vocal styles of her favorite artists. Currently, she loves singing “Let It Go” from the Disney movie Frozen and Katy Perry‘s “Wide Awake”. 😀
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Having said that, I believe children are the greatest “cover” artists in the world. Remember Sid the Sloth of the movie Ice Age when the three baby dinosaurs mimicked and imitated his scratching of his back?
A child can interpret a parent’s reaction to a particular situation and can easily integrate the attitude into their personalities. Whenever we show a negative attitude towards money subjects, most likely our child will do the same.
Do you want to know some signs that you’re sending the wrong financial messages to your kids? I know I’ve written an article about showing the proper money behavior to children but here are some more of them:
1) Sighing and groaning when you open your bills and statements. This may send a message to your kids that money is annoying and that we they should avoid talking about it. You are passing the concept of fear to your children if you continue doing this.
2) Throwing bills and unopened statements or leaving them scattered around the house. This may send a message to your kids that these “papers” are just mere papers without value.
3) Not writing down your budget. Chances are, kids will one day watch a TV show or a movie depicting parents doing household budgeting and becoming successful eventually in managing finances. This will make them wonder why you are not setting aside regular time for this activity.
4) Not organizing bills, receipts, invoices, statements, and other documents. In one of my entrepreneurship webinars with Fitz Villafuerte of Ready To Be Rich, he mentioned that if you want to be successful in business then you should know how to organize your papers and documents in fashion even at home. According to him, this is a sign that you are a good manager and businessman.
5) Not saving and investing. Sooner or later your kids will hear about the importance of saving and growing money for their education or their health either through TV shows or through your relatives. If you as a family person has not yet considered investing either in pooled funds or stocks, your child might think that you don’t care for them and their future.
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Know How To Solve Problems as a Parent (and Have Our Kids Join!)
Fearing our financial issues and postponing solving them will eventually only result in making bad decisions. But if we deal with them immediately not only will we identify problems earlier, we will also surely come up with better solutions.
This is why we are so excited to homeschool our child because we can have her participate in some of the household spending decisions. We can also encourage her to come up with ideas on how to save and grow our money.
Perhaps viewing some illustrative Pesos and Sense and Investopedia videos will be part of our curriculum. For sure, many of our child’s ideas may not be practical for now but I won’t mind.
When she grows up and do her own budgeting, she will surely have a positive attitude towards money and will not be afraid making decisions because she already knows that she can do it.
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