Explaining the worlds of economics to a 9 year old

avantra

Not sure this the place to ask but I will anyway.


I am trying to explain to my young nephew (9) in lament terms the economical conditions we are in now and were in the past. He asks many questions and he is a very curious child.

Managed to explain how savings work, but I find it hard to give him a concise short explanation about all these terms he see on TV like ‘ the credit crunch’ (a breakfast cereal?) , ‘ the credit bubble’, the mortgage squeeze’, what the BOE do? Etc’ etc’

Does anyone aware of a good simple source that lists all these monsters? I had a look on the net but everything I see is a bit too complex, but I have a gut feeling something like this must be somewhere on the internet.

mary

Can't point you to any particular site, however I have had 6 kids (now age 30 down to 13) and gone through many of those probing questions. 3 kids now graduated, 4th one there and remaining 2 will probably follow suit. Their lives as children are only too short in the big scheme of things. Let them enjoy their childhood and not get bogged down with the complexities of adult life until a little later. Pocket money, newspaper round deliveries at a later age, 13, spend a little of their income and introduce the idea of savings accounts so they are focussed. The rest will fall inline.

InMyDreams

Hi avantra,
Have you seen the 'Money as Debt' animation by Paul Grignon?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279
I think it's a great intro into the history of banking and the whole concept of modern money. Might not be exactly what you are looking for as it doesn't explicitly mention the current buzz words, but well worth watching to put any further explanations into context. I reckon a bright and interested 9 year old should be able to follow a lot of it. Certainly the first half.

avantra

Thanks

I wish I didn't have to explain, but he is one of those special kids (you know the kind that sit in Mastermind?:rotfl:) it is better to give him the info otherwise he will drive me bananas.:cool:

InMyDreams

mary wrote: »

Let them enjoy their childhood and not get bogged down with the complexities of adult life until a little later.

But surely one of the magical things about childhood is the way they innocently soak up so much information about what is going on around them? I would always try to answer a child's questions. We've just remortgaged and my 8yo was fascinated. We've had some really interesting discussions about credit, borrowing and lending. As with so many topics, it's possible to talk about some basic mechanics if they are interested way before children are old enough to start worrying about the implications. It doesn't have to 'bog them down', just feed their interest. Having said that, avantra, you may want to view that video first as it *is* quite scary!

Meltdown_2

Children's questions are often the most interesting.
If you can't answer them in terms they can understand, it probably means that you don't understand the subject adequately yourself.

Avantra,
it sounds to me that what you need to do is to make sure your nephew knows how to use a search-engine to best effect.
And how he should not believe everything he reads there.
(And how some sites are more likely to generate malware than others. )
Then let him loose.

Lokolo

Teach him that google is his friend, his best friend. And all the answers are in google. For google, is a master.

Meltdown_2

Teach him that there are other search-engines, besides google ...

debbie42

...and whatever you do, teach him not to just believe single sources like wikipedia!

debbie42

Meltdown wrote: »

Children's questions are often the most interesting.
If you can't answer them in terms they can understand, it probably means that you don't understand the subject adequately yourself.

This is so true!

munk

Moneywise has a push to try and get economic issues on the national curriculum here:

http://www.moneywise.co.uk/news-views/tv/2008/01/25/kidsandcash-getting-personal-finance-the-national-curriculum

Not read into it myself, just know about it from reading Moneywise mag, may be of interest perhaps.