Street Smarts at an Early Age

Gabrielle Blair is a super blogger and has a series on her site featuring home tours from other cool families. This bit from the most recent one really stuck with me. Rebecca Brown has two kids (7 and 5) who she also home schools, and this is what she said about that:

I’m also a big believer in kids getting their street smarts at an early age, so I make sure we spend a lot of time out of the house working on handling money, visiting house-bound church members, crossing streets, reading street signs, etc. This summer we’re doing a transportation unit and will spend a lot of time learning how use our local bus and train systems, so when they backpack through Europe or Asia one day they will have no fear of public transportation or reading a subway map.

I love that: “street smarts at an early age.” I can remember playing cashier in elementary school and counting out fake change and balancing a checkbook in middle school math class, but that’s about the extent of the proper education I had about money as a young kid. Having your 5 and 7 year old kids use the bus and train and buy things with cash seems super cool and progressive. Also: A mom who expects and hopes for her kids to backpack solo abroad? Awesome.

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.