Empowering Children to Give
Guest Blogger: Louise from Momstart.com
How do you teach your children something like giving, through example, repetition or experience? All are great ideas and ways to empower children to accomplish things and learn. For use it’s about all three. Through my blog I’ve had many amazing opportunities to help the community. I’ve participated in a national toy drive locally two years in a row and as we review toys we receive to review the children know that they don’t get to keep very many of them because we find kids in need in our community to give the toys to. We’ve also taken them shopping to pick out toys to give to kids in need. So they’ve seen the example.
When we put food in the food bin at church it always raises questions. Mom why are we putting food in the bin at church? I tell them because some families don’t have enough money or food to eat. She was shocked; you mean they don’t have enough food. When we did a cereal drive she was she was shocked again to find out that during the summer when school is out some kids go without breakfast. It’s amazing to me that it was such a learning experience to both of us, to her how much need there is in the world and to me how easy it was to teach her about charity. And that’s what it’s about; you have to have a conversation with them. Find out what they understand and find out how they want to get involved.
Our preschool teacher told me one afternoon that my son was the only child in the class to have any understanding of what charity was, I chucked because it reminded me of how long they both thought charity was the name of the person we were giving everything to. It took them a while to come to understand that charity was a name of a group of people in need and that there were so many different charities. The biggest surprise of all was when our daughter decided to give all of her birthday presents to charity this year. She’s only five years old and she made this decision on her own. She talked it over with her dad and they told me what she wanted to do. I was torn, it was her very first birthday party, and every time I watched her attend someone else’s birthday party and she watched them open their presents I sat and wondered, are we doing the right thing? Yes, she wanted to do this and she told all her friends and her parents that the toys were going to charity. They are both learning from example, experience and repetition.
So how should you respond?
Let them give how they want to give. Talk to them, encourage them, find their passion and help them grow in it and let them give.
