Kids Volunteering

Tuesday I challenged you to help someone else this week.  I hope you took the challenge to heart and have either completed it or have plans to do something soon.  Now, how about your kids  volunteering?

Today I want to talk a little bit about getting your kids involved in helping others.  If you have kids, they are watching you.  In fact, you can bet they are paying more attention to what you are doing than what you are saying.  So let them see you help someone else.  Let them see that by helping others we create a better, happier life for ourselves and bless someone else at the same time.

I don’t know about you, but I want my kids to have generous, giving, compassionate hearts.

In addition to modeling the behaviour you want to encourage, why not get them involved too? Most kids naturally love to do things for other people – especially younger kids.  That is the perfect age to take advantage of that natural inclination and help them find ways to let it blossom.

A few simple ways to include your kids:

• If you volunteer someplace regularly (or would like to start) ask about allowing children to volunteer – some places would LOVE that!
• Have you kids help you put together some “homeless” bags (something as simple as a granola bar and a bottle of water and maybe a pair of socks or gloves in a plastic baggie that you can keep in your car).   I bet next time they see that homeless person on the side of the road, they’ll remind you to pass the bag out the window!
• Kids love to create, so let them make cards to send to soldiers or to take to your local nursing home.
• Take a bag of food to the local food pantry – ask the manager of it if your kids could look around and learn a bit about how the pantry works. Or add some food to one of the many little pantries that are popping up!
• Remember that charity can start at home – maybe there is someone in your own family who could use some cheering up or someone to do chores around the house or run errands.  Helping them would be a wonderful way to teach your kids that all of us need help at some point.

What a great world it would be if all of us taught our kids the values of kindness and thinking of others – by teaching them, you really are paying it forward!

Got any more ideas?  I’d love to hear them, so please share in the comments!