For those of you who were still skeptical, Michigan State Extension recently came out with a great article detailing how reading to children can actually help them learn entrepreneurship skills. According to the article, which references research stating that a person’s views about money are pretty much set in stone by about the age of seven, introducing financial concepts to a child at a young age they are more likely to learn the skills necessary to become a successful entrepreneur. The article then goes on to list a handful of books which deal with the concept of small business that would be great conversation starters for young children.
While this theory definitely needs to be taken with a hefty grain of salt (you can’t turn your kid into the next Bill Gates simply by reading them The Magic School Bus Gets Programmed), the general concept is certainly interesting. How we as adults foster the entrepreneurial spirit for upcoming generations will go a long way towards deciding what types of small business owners emerge in the future.It wasn’t too long ago that entrepreneurship was synonymous with the American spirit. It’s said that Warren Buffet began his long and immensely successful financial career by going door to door selling chewing gum as a young child. At the age of 11 he had already made his first investment in the stock market, and by the time he was in high school he was already a small business owner. The rest, as they say, is history.
Obviously not every child will be afforded the chance to follow the same career arch as Buffet; an incredible number of very specific conditions must be met to achieve even a fraction of that amount of success. But if reading to your kid or teaching about business at a young age is able to foster the type of conditions that encourage future entrepreneurship, that alone would make it more than worth the investment.