A mum has urged more parents to teach their children the value of money, after arguing that children will understand more than we give them credit for.
Mum-of-two Donatella started her video explaining that she’d heard someone say that children can’t understand such complex ideas, which she disagreed with. “When people say that kids don’t understand things from a young age or can’t understand complex things, it’s such a privileged aspect that they’re coming from,” she argued.
She then said claimed immigrant children often will know about complex things such as banking, immigration, and legal documents as they often have to step up and translate things for their parents that might not speak English as well as them.
“Now obviously that’s an extreme scenario because kids really shouldn’t be dealing with stuff like that,” Donatella, who grew up in London, said. “But as someone who would be considered an immigrant child, I know first hand that when it came to money, I understood things pretty early.”
WARNING: The video below includes strong language
Donatella, who is pregnant with her third child, went on to explain that she wanted her older son, who is seven years old, to also have a good understanding about the meaning and value of money, which is why they started teaching him about it from a young age.
“We’ve instilled with him, you know, how to earn money, he does chores, he earns his own money, he’s got his own savings,” she explained. “If he really really really wants to buy something, he can use his own money to buy it. But then he needs to understand like what percentage of that is his whole money and is it worth it and so on.”
She went on to say that she’d realised how much their teachings had benefitted her son after a kind act he’d recently done at school. “And he didn’t tell me this straight away so he wasn’t telling me to like boast or kind of win brownie points, if you will,” she said.
Donatella explained that his son had been given £5 to take part in a shopping event at school, where the students could buy smaller things such as pens and other smaller things
One of his friends had forgotten to bring his own money, so Donatella’s son had given him £1 so he could also take part in the auction. “He told me that since he didn’t want his friend to miss out, he gave him a pound,” Donatella said. “One of his pounds that he’d brought in, so that his friend could partake and be involved in this event.
“My heart completely melted, because it’s kid of like with food when they say if you restricted his food, when they get like candy or some chocolate or sweets or anything, they go crazy because they don’t know the concept of portion control,” Donatella explained. “And I think the same thing with money.”
He explain that she got proud of her son for seeing pass the value of his money and not feeling the urge to spend it all by himself, but instead gave some to his friend so he could also partake.
“So this is why in our household we’ve always been huge advocates of teaching our kids money and giving our kids money so they can actually like learn how to spend it and understand what money means.”
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