The Value of Things

My son is at the age where all money is valuable. I can get him to be very happy if I give him some loose change and he treats it as if I gave him hundreds of dollars. He's going into first grade and he can count the change for how much he has, but he doesn't exactly understand the value of what he has. Neither does his sister, who is going into fourth grade. My son asked if he earned any money for being helpful around the house. I went along with it and gave him the meager change in my pocket; approximately 17 cents - four coins. He was absolutely satisfied with getting that amount.
My daughter has a bit more sense and you can't get away with that anymore, but she still doesn't understand the importance of saving, delaying gratification, or not buying something that is just not worth it. Now she has a heart of gold, mind you, and she will be the first person to volunteer up something for tzedaka (charity/donation), but she too does not understand the value of stuff. For example, (and I'm not saying any kid/person doesn't fight with this impulse) if she has five dollars in her purse, she can't wait until the ice cream truck comes along. She wants to use that money so much that it doesn't matter what she spends it on. And, she will volunteer to buy her brother an ice cream and only requires the appropriate thanks and acknowledgement be given. She even wants to pay for food when we go out. It's a nice quality in her that she is so thoughtful, don't get me wrong.
The other day my son showed me a $20 and informed me that his sister gave it to him. For what? For giving her a piece of some food item that he was eating. A fair trade, they both thought. Even after my questioning.
Now this leads me to another level of not understanding the value of money. At the school I work at I walked into the office and the principal showed me two $100 bills. At first it wasn't such a surprise because every once in a while a kid brings in some Show-And-Tell that they found at home and then, well, shows it to everyone. Or they try to buy some friends, or something like that. In this case, a kid found $300 and brought it in. She bought a very large pencil from one kid for $100 and then a rectangular pencil for another $100. I don't remember enough to say what the third $100 bill fetched, but you get the picture. When questioned about the pencil, the response was, "But it was a very large pencil!"
So, as in many things in life, we need to make a few mistakes to get our sites lined up. For that kid, 2 of the 3 bills were recovered. We've all made poor judgements on money matters and all experienced buyer's remorse or had a V-8 moment. Somewhere in those experiences is where we learn the value of money.
And when you have kids, you learn not to keep it where they can get to it.