Randy Alcorn:
As parents, we should help our children learn to associate money with labor. Money and possessions do not fall out of the sky. They are earned through work–good, hard, and well-done work. We can encourage our children to work at tasks, make things, and sell them. We can teach them that work can be meaningful and fun as well as financially profitable.
A common mistake that parents make is to dole out money to children arbitrarily as life goes by. This teaches them to believe money has no cost, that it comes easily or automatically. As a result, they disassociate money from work. They begin imagining it’s their right to have money even when they haven’t worked for it. It’s this faulty thinking that later puts able-bodied people on welfare. Although the government fosters this kind of handout mentality, the attitude itself is–tragically–usually learned at home.
from Money, Possessions, and Eternity