We want our children to appreciate the giving spirit of the holiday season firsthand, by helping out and giving up time or something of value for someone else. A friend recently asked me what can we do during the holidays with our kids to bring this point home.
Teaching kids about giving while you’re racing in a triathlon of shopping, decorating and hosting can really dilute the message. You have to pick priorities: Is it painting pinecones for table decorations or is it teaching about giving? Is it time together or is it time waiting in long lines with strangers?
When you realize that you can’t do it all and you can’t have it all, you are at the beginning of the lessons of giving.
The first lesson of giving is giving something up. Admit you can’t do it all, and decide on two or three priorities this holiday season. Three really is plenty.
Focusing your attention will help your children focus their attention. The "giving spirit" won’t become a "busy spirit" or the "crazy chaos spirit."
The second lesson is harder than it sounds: Define giving.
Think of this as a family game in which everyone takes turns thinking about examples of words such as generous, indulgence, plenty, entitlement, spoiled, wasteful, supportive, caring, kindness, appreciation, needs and wants.
You can play this in different ways: Tell a story and have everyone guess which word fits the story, or as a charade game, or as a card game in which people are trying to get rid of the "spoiled" card. You get the idea.
Understanding what the words mean is an important lesson for all ages.
Lesson three of giving: Don’t teach giving as a one-time event that happens in December.
Have your children write or tell you a list of all their really and truly absolutely most favorite things that happened during the year. This includes things they received.
Have them make a star next to those things on their list that they think are so great that all kids should receive that too. That becomes the kids to-do lists for the year.
Perhaps your daughter picked going to camp as her favorite thing. She would save money in a penny jar in her room to help send another child to camp during the summer.
All year there are things you may do together to work toward this goal. Maybe your daughter earns some money for this jar or maybe you make contributions to the jar on birthdays and holidays.
Perhaps your son’s favorite thing is making cookies after school. Every month, he donates cookie supplies to the food bank.
In my house, my daughters, who love their books, wanted to collect and distribute high quality books to children in foster homes and shelters. They chose the summer and school holidays as the best time to do this because they didn’t have homework and other competing activities.
Start with the heart. Children have heart connections to special people, places and animals in their family. Cleaning up the yard at Grandma’s house or painting a room for her, baking dog treats for the animals in a shelter and picking up trash at a well-loved park are great ways to connect the heart to the giving.
I’m going to resist going on and on. Helping family members resist going on and on with gifts is important too. Indulgence, spoiling and overdoing it does not teach giving. It teaches entitlement and expectations that are hard to correct.
If you’ve decided to focus on teaching giving, help extended family members support that choice. Maybe they want to join the trash pickup event, or maybe they want to donate something to the food bank too.
Sarri Gilman, a licensed therapist, has founded two nonprofit organizations to support children and teens who have been homeless. She is a mother, wife and songwriter. Her column is on living life with purpose and meaning. You can e-mail her features@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
