Raising A Charitable Heart

I hope to raise children with gracious, charitable, understanding, giving hearts. Yet I assume that's a hard target for parents who start raising their children at birth. In my case, I'm battling all previous guardians impressions on them...plus they have felt deprived, so giving is tough. They've had to look out for themselves and asking them to consider stranger's well-being is asking so much. I've got years to get there and I can try to be patient. But, I want to start laying the seeds now that can grow later.

They came to me with tons of toys...many broken or outgrown. I put a bin outside their room and told them to put any toys or clothes that they wanted to donate to charity in that bin. I explained early on that they would get new toys or clothes to replace the ones donated...not necessarily one to one, but that was the way to get new. Joey immediately caught on and put all of his clothes that didn't fit anymore in the bin...all of his old, dirty socks went in and most of his broken toys. He tried to help Josh understand, but Josh had no interest in giving anything away.

I know that the best way to instill generosity is to lead by example. They’ve seen me take 2 large garbage bags of clothes and such to Goodwill. And they watched me buy a new purse and go home and take 2 old purses out of my closet and put them in the charity bin. I’m certain they are storing those kinds of things away and thinking about them later.

One day, I held up a tiny shirt and asked Josh if he can still wear it. He said no, but he wanted to keep it because he liked it. I asked what he liked about it wondering if there was some particularly sentimental memory associated with the shirt. He just thought it was cool. When I told him we can’t keep everything that we used to love to wear but doesn’t fit anymore, he said okay then I could get rid of it.

All of Josh’s socks and underwear are way too big for him. The socks make putting on his shoes very difficult. I went to Kohl’s to make sure that smaller ones existed and then I asked him if he’d like some socks that fit him so he could get his foot in his shoe. Yes, please! So, I bought him a bunch of new socks and about 20 pairs of larger socks went in the charity bin. I know he’ll eventually grow into them. But he’s been wearing them, so they aren’t new and we can buy new when his feet grow. I also bought him a really long shoe horn that looks like a snake so he can get his shoes on much more easily now. He loves his shoe horn!!

Back to giving…each week when they get their allowance, they divvy it up into 3 brightly colored envelopes. Give, Save and Spend. A minimum of $1 must go into Give and Save, but where the rest of the money goes is their choice. For 4 weeks now, $1 has gone into Give and all of the rest has gone into Save. If anything was in the Spend envelopes, those would travel in the car with us in case they wanted to buy something on the fly. Within a few days of receiving the envelopes they asked if they could use their Give money to give things to each other. Sneaky, sneaky! Made me smile that they had worked that out on their own…but no. Give money isn’t for gifts; it’s for charity. Once we amass more than a few dollars, I’ll start giving them ideas of what we might do with our Give money. I think I’ll come up with 3 or 4 ideas and let them pick one each. Then we can work out when we should donate it and I’ll make a big deal out of that.

When I received a new picture of one of the kids I sponsor with World Vision, I sat down with Josh and Joey and explained who he is and what is circumstance is and that we send him money every month to support him, his family and his community. They listened intently. When I was finished, Joey said, “Do I understand this right? You are sending our money to this guy?” I smiled and just said, “Yes.”

As far as service goes, I want to lead by example there too. They know I volunteer at the church on Sundays. I used to spend a great deal of my time in service in my community…every way I could imagine…Habitat For Humanity, local races and charity events, mission work, etc. It’s much harder to do these things as a single mom. I think it would be great if I could find a friend with a son who is around 10-12 years old and loves to do things like volunteer at the children’s hospital or visit veterans or something like that. If another child could explain how fulfilling it is to help someone else, I could really see that making an impression…at least on Joey. I don’t think Josh is mature enough yet to get it, but I could be wrong. Josh loves dogs…Maybe I should look into something with the SPCA or animal hospital. I’ve got to do some research. Maybe for Thanksgiving my whole family could go help at a soup kitchen in east Austin.

But mostly, I’ll just try to be patient and let God do His work.