I came to the conclusion many years ago that my husband and I will never be super rich. Oh sure, compared to much of the world, we already are super rich. I’m talking about millionaires. The reason I reached this conclusion is because, no matter how much we get, we always buy something more for the school! Don’t get me wrong; I’m not griping. I’m thankful to have money to make ideas a reality. I just don’t think we are the kind of people to amass riches for ourselves. My dad used to joke when we’d take a vacation, “How are you enjoying your inheritance?” I have carried on that same joke. The way I see it, I can spend the money now making a memory with my children, or I can store it away so that they will have an inheritance, and who knows whether it will be used wisely or not. The memory is worth much more to me!
Children are generous at different stages in their lives… just about as many stages as those at which they are selfish. The key to helping your child experience more generosity than selfishness is pointing out the good feelings and the good results of the generosity. If you teach your child to give coins in the Salvation Army bucket every Christmas, but you never show him what those coins do, you’ve made a memory, not an instance of generosity. It is important to teach our kids how valuable the gifts of time and funding can be to helping others.
We actively teach philanthropy at our school. If these kids are being trained to be future leaders, they must learn generosity. I think the buzz word in business now is corporate social responsibility. I am so very pleased that most corporations support paying it forward, making sure that they lessen their carbon footprint, volunteer in the community and fund issues important to their clients.
What in traditional education teaches us to think of others? We compete in grades and sports and fine arts, trying our hardest to make sure we stand out more than our peers so that we can get better opportunities that should lead to a better job. That was training for the way corporate America used to think. If the schools are going to train students for the present work world, they are going to have teach these kids corporate social responsibility now. One way to do that is to make sure the kids are being philanthropic.
Examples of opportunities to be generous that we give our students (some of which they came up with) are: Operation Christmas Child (the kids fill a shoe box with toys for a specific gender and age; the box goes to a child in a third-world country for Christmas); blood drives, disaster relief fundraisers, and most recently, giving gift cards and favorite snacks for the homeless teens in our public school district.
A great time to start your child thinking generously is right after Christmas. Everybody’s generous at Christmas. But what happens to hungry families after everyone stops doing massive numbers of food drives and feedings? Volunteering at a soup kitchen or even offering to wash and fold donations to a center are great ways to teach generosity. Even easier than that, do what I used to do with my kids. For every new toy they got for Christmas, they had to donate one of their own toys (still in good condition) to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. Once I explained how parents could buy those toys for their children a lot cheaper than at retail, my kids were happy to donate, and they realized how many toys just sit there because they grew bored with them. I’ve always felt that something stored for over a year (excluding seasonal items) probably isn’t being used. I could continue to store it, or I could let somebody use it.
Be sure to help your child learn how to be wise in his philanthropy, of course, but teach him nonetheless to be generous. Nothing’s worse than dealing with an adult who still thinks like a selfish child.
- Michelle