4 ways to teach children the joy of holiday giving

Let the children feed the spirit of this holiday is the best way to lead by example. Rather than just sending about what you’re doing checks, your favorite charity, talk to your child why you picked up the cause. Then let them participate

Hands-on experience as possible. children are more directly involved, the deeper the impression of experience will make longer memories will continue. Holidays provides a lot of opportunities. For example, ask your child to help you choose a gift to a local toy drive. Even better, let them buy it with their own money.

Or you can give the kids a sum – for example, $ 100 or any amount you feel comfortable – and let them decide how to allocate it. In a family, the children decided to “adopt” a single mother and her four children for Christmas. “Using more than its allocated money to buy things the family of children,” said their proud father.

Based on the annual holiday lesson. Ask your child to help you pick up the clothes that they have outgrown or no longer use them to play with toys. And when you give up the old project, so they can see how much appreciation for their generosity in children.

Once the children reach middle school or high school, they are old enough to donate their time and volunteer themselves. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes can encourage the sharing of life.

At first remember the generosity does not just mean money. This also means that the hand considerate of others and lending a helping. Last winter, I wrote about whether to have children shoveling snow or encourage them to do so, free to good-neighborly column. I mentioned that, when my husband across the street of our son and his neighbors together to help the elderly, the gesture made a deep impression.

In response to the column, I am from a mother who said her daughter at school students are encouraged to bring help change children need to hear – but there is a, in bringing class most of the bonus money, most children are concentrated in the award. “It’s sad that so many children just want to do a good thing to get a reward,” she said.

Sad and ineffect I have. In order to encourage the generosity of others, it seems to be to provide incentives to encourage considerate behavior mainly when it is beneficial to children Nancy Eisenberg, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University who studies social behavior said.

Offering praise or approval work better, but there is no nothing better than getting down and dirty. Another mother wrote to tell me that her neighbors to help her shoveling her sidewalk, while her husband was deployed to Afghanistan. She returned the favor, and with her 7-year-old son with her. “Now, he went to a neighbor shovel away, as long as there is any ground of snow,” she said. “This is to teach him the significance of caring.”