Games

Oh, yeah, yes I did, if someone offer the coins. Like my classmates. But you know what, once I get over that phase, I simply refuse to go together since I realize it's a waste of time and money. Many early arcade have that "unfair" part to eat your tokens by design, you don't get through those by simply dumping more money and get more practice in. Like I said, you need limited useful resource, like money in your total control to really drill that experience in. If I was given allowance to blow in arcade AND still get toys, ice cream, whatever snack, soda drink etc, then for sure I am not learning that opportunity cost lesson. It is very early on I was told, you get this X amount per week, but parents are not going to buy my any of those. Best they could do is if I get good grades and they 50% match to get some toy I really wanted. So I'd have to save my allowance to do it. Pretty nice trick to do to children but very effective. They are also busy working so I can understand pretty early that the allowance is a means to train me to become more independent, so I can cover that responsibility to buy food etc for my younger siblings. It also helped greatly to manage my money after I am on my own in university dorm.

Brain circuitry evolves with practice and doing the value assessment with proper rewards, that's why some 5yo can run a shop or do grocery shopping for parents. (And not blowing the money on candies). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA_AUMxSZUM examples that I found, it's a show but it dates back way longer before internet even is a thing. They do those out of necessity since that's how most post war kids grow up so that's how they teach their kids. There are much older shows if you can find source, and I bet India or say pretty much any country without proper child labor law you will see children running stuff for parents. It is part of their reality and they simply learn early on that wasting money on [insert gambling or wasteful spending] is simply not an option. They might starve if they make mistakes like those.

So what we do in modern resource abundance world? We create and craft the situation and train our kids to adapt, early and with proper rewards. Independence is a hard thing to train for sure, and western law(say much accompany with 12yo or older if you are younger) basically make it a bit harder if your neighbor would call cops if your kid just leave your side by 50 meters.(I am joking but I guess some might actually do it.)