“Money is evil, and evil is never enough” (folk) The topic of pocket money for children often arises in family therapy sessions. Parents, as a rule, treat this area of ​​​​life with particular trepidation, and are very afraid of making a mistake, “forming the wrong attitude towards money.” Let's try to understand this issue together, for which we will answer the most frequently asked parental questions: “A child needs money for the same thing as an adult: to satisfy his needs” - this is how the vast majority of adults answer this question reasonably, and not all of them necessarily psychologists :-) Therefore, you can start giving money to your child when these needs appear. This usually happens at primary school age, when the child becomes more independent: he learns to pay for himself at the school cafeteria, store, and use transport. First, it is advisable to teach him to pay money in the store himself, correlate the price of the goods with the available amount and wait for change. And of course, the amount we give the child depends on the income of our family: after all, this is pocket money, which means there should not be too much of it a lot of. If children grow up in a poor family, parents often feel guilty that they cannot give them more, and gradually children can begin to manipulate their parents using their feelings of guilt. In rich families, parents sometimes go to two extremes: they give an unreasonably large amount of money to the child, compensating for their busyness and lack of attention, or they rigidly assign a very small amount, “so that they know the value of money.” So, let's move on to the questions: How to teach a child to understand the value of money? Children's attitude towards money is formed in the family and generally reflects the attitude of this family towards the material sphere of life. Cloe Madanes, one of the most respected family therapists in the world, author of The Secret Meaning of Money, cites an interesting fact: 81% of the population believes that they do not know how to manage money well, but 100% of parents say that they give money to their children in such a way that so that they can learn a useful lesson for the future. So it is advisable to teach a child what you can do well yourself, and in this case, both disdain for money on the part of adults: “Money is dirt,” and an obsession with material things, “Without money, you are nothing,” are unproductive. Even children of primary school age should at least have a general idea of ​​where their parents get money from and how family expenses are made. How to give money to a child? (reward for something + other options) It is best to determine a constant amount of pocket money, and not be tempted to establish “commodity-money relations” at home: “You give me an A from school, I give you a bonus.” Otherwise, the child will transfer it to everything spheres of life. You can encourage his successes on an emotional level: praise, support, in the end, together celebrate some success in a cafe, etc. The most important thing is to explain to the child that since he has the right to manage money, albeit small, then new responsibilities have appeared - for example, helping with something around the house.