Today's parents and grandparents have become good at giving children everything they want. But is this really a good thing for children's financial sense?

Whether we're approaching Christmas, a birthday or just an ordinary day, we often want to do everything we can to fulfil our children's wishes. They may get new toys for no reason, but just because they want them. And what you want you shall get... But what does your child learn from this?

Most of us probably want our children to grow up to be sensible young people with good financial sense. They should not get into debt unless they buy a house and then, of course, they should save.

Play with numbers and money

You may know this from yourself, but many people learn best by seeing things visually. So the easiest way to learn to count is to play with numbers. Here, it can be coins, for example. Take 10 1 kroner and let your child count them first. What are 10 pennies? That's 10 kroner. What if you take away 2 pennies? Then we have 8 crowns instead. You could give the money to a teddy bear or let the teddy bear buy a fig stick.

You can also play candy shop on Fridays and let the child buy what goes in the candy bowl. Then the fig sticks might cost 2 crowns, the gummy bears 1 crown each, etc. Then give the child an amount to buy for. It will be a fun way to get the candy you like into the bowl.

It's about starting small and working your way up.

Talk finances with your child

This doesn't mean you should sit down with your 4-year-old daughter and tell her about your bank loan. It just means it's okay to tell kids the simple rules about money. So when the kids are pestering for some new toys, you can ask the question "where does money come from?". It can be a fun and educational chat for your child.

Because where does the money come from - it's just on a plastic card! It's much more abstract than when we saw our parents paying with cash. With cash we saw money disappear or be turned into other money e.g. a banknote was turned into coins. Today we put a plastic card or a smartphone to a gadget in the shop and then we have to take the thing and go. We don't visually see the money being taken.

Help your child understand that you have to work to get money and that you don't get an infinite amount of money. Here it is also obvious to talk about the fact that you can sell something to get money and then you can buy something new. Otherwise, you might be able to find that toy used and thus spend less money on it.

Remember to turn learning into play

Everything in children's world is more easily understood and better stored in the brain if it comes in as a game.

If you want to read more about children and money, read this article. Here you can also find clever ways for kids to learn how to save money, as well as tasks kids can do if they want to earn pocket money themselves.