Teaching Your Children Responsibility for Their Belongings

For those with kids, you know all too well how challenging it can be to get them to respect their things. You have witnessed several occasions where they toss an expensive toy into the air or dip their doll’s hair into the mud. In some cases, they may decide to take their toys apart to see how they are made, or maybe they have stopped playing with them all together.

No Sense of How Money Works

Watching these events unfold can be incredibly frustrating and aggravating. After all, good money was spent on those items. Part of the problem is that kids don’t see a connection between what they were given, and how much they cost. More often than not, this is because they didn’t have to pay for the item.

If you want your kids to take better care of their belongings, they need to understand that the item is valuable, so that they see it as worth taking care of and keeping track of. This can be accomplished in different ways.

Start Small

Most kids don’t understand the value of money. They don’t realize that to get belongings, someone has to work for the money. However, they can understand the value of time. This is a great place to start to teach them how to take care of their belongings.

Even from a young age, kids know the value of time. That’s often why they get up early, and fight you when it comes to taking naps or going to bed. You can use this to your advantage. and use jobs to allow kids to earn rewards. This will be a great transition into teaching them that time is worth money as they get older.

Starting small and at a young age can be beneficial. There are chores that even two-year-olds can do. For example, you can have them set the table for dinner before they are able to play with their favorite toy. If they don’t do chores, they don’t get the reward.

The chores you have your kids do will depend on what needs to be done in the house and their abilities. The most important thing to remember is that if they don’t complete the task, they don’t get the reward.

Increase Responsibilities and Rewards with Age

As your kids get older, you can give them more responsibilities and chores. You may also decide to change their reward system from being able to play with their favorite toy to actually earning money. To teach them how to take care of their belongings on a different level, you might consider having them pay for their own items.

For example, if they really want a new video game that just came out, but you don’t want to pay for it because they haven’t taken care of the other ones you bought for them, use this opportunity to have them save up and buy their own. This may help them realize that nothing comes for free, and that taking care of their belongings is beneficial.

Use Natural Consequences

As kids get older, their belongings will become more expensive. That means that if they get broken, it will be harder to replace them. Teach them that if they don’t take care of their belongings and they get broken, there are natural consequences that occur. An example of this is their phone. If they don’t put phone screen protection on their phone, and the screen gets cracked, they’ll be unable to use it because of the damage. They’ll either have to live without the phone or pay to get it fixed/replaced.

Most kids don’t know how to take care of their belongings, because they have no idea how money works. By teaching them that time has value from a young age, this may help them appreciate and take care of their belongings.