SAVING HABIT

CHILDREN enjoy collecting coins of smaller denominations and keeping them in a box next to their schoolbooks.

They value the dificulties in getting the “little savings” from the elders, especially parents.

Whenever relatives would visit home, they would donate cash to children. It is a kind of feel that they are also given certain importance and respect like their elders in the family, a kind of motivation to become responsible adults.

As the money preserved is like gems for the children, they keep counting them often and watch how it increases.

The children consider it their “hard-earned” money and spend the savings wisely and carefully whichever way they can.

They also get annoyed when someone tries to snatch their saving, as my daughter’s savings box was taken away when she failed to fulil a promise.

“I want my money back, when will I get it?” she often asks me and I explain to her the reason for clearing the earnings from her safe-keeping. But she still feels it is safe. It tells me that today’s children do realise that there is value for everything they preserve. They have a kind of feel that when they personally own something it has a value in real life.

Perhaps more than anything, what the children would be missing in the new age is true affection.