Let's do our kids the favor of taking the mystery out of money.

There are plenty of people who think that money isn't an appropriate topic for kids, especially very young kids. I'm not one of them; I think that money is a topic that's surrounded by a ton of secrecy in our society - even close friends and family members often don't discuss finances with each other - and that all that secrecy does is make people feel even more at sea about a topic that is likely already a pretty big stressor in their lives.

For the past few months, we've been testing out different ways of instituting a reward system with our five-year-old son (three weeks of not biting nails = a small toy; clearing your dish every night for a week = 25 cents), but none of them have felt quite right, mostly because it's been difficult getting him to understand that a quarter means something; it's not just an odd, shiny toy to play with. And besides, I'm sort of from the "kids should help out and do the right thing because that's what they should do, not because they're being paid for it" school of thought, so rewarding our son for chores and such has always felt a little odd to me.

This is how reading feels to me. It's an experience I want for my children, too.

I started trying to teach my son to read about a year ago, using a system that I cobbled together based on what seemed to make sense - having him sound out the titles of books before we read them, having him sound out words within the books here and there, and following along with my finger so he'd be able to see where we were.

It didn't work. He was constantly frustrated, wanting to get to the fun part (the part where he didn't have to put in work), and it seemed like we never made any forward progress. I mentioned this to my friend Erin, who happens to be a third-grade teacher, and the next day at school dropoff she handed me a stack of the most boring-looking books in the world. They're black-and-white and don't contain especially compelling stories...but I am not kidding when I tell you that what they did was skyrocket my son forward in a matter of weeks. The books make him feel good about himself - they move you forward incrementally, making kids feel confident in their abilities while gradually introducing new concepts - and just reading two or three a night has been nothing short of transformative.