A Helping Hand Teaching Kids to Give Back for the Holidays - Sleep Sense

While some of us are blessed with a roof over our head and food to eat, there are far too many who aren’t so lucky. Never is this more evident than during the holidays, when some families are buying gifts and cooking extravagant meals for their loved ones while others are dealing with poverty and homelessness.

While we want our kids to enjoy the holidays, it’s also important for them to understand that life is not the same for all people, and that some of us struggle more than others. And it’s also important for them to know that even though they are only kids, there’s still something they can do about it.

In our family, we spend one night during the holidays taking the children to the grocery store and loading the cart full of bread, cheese, ham, mayo and mustard. Then we go home and pass the evening making sandwiches together. Even the little ones can help, and we end up with a real assembly line and have lots of fun loading up the cooler.

The next day we drive to an area of town known for its homeless population and hand out our sandwiches. The first year we did this we noticed that many people didn’t have gloves, so we added a big bag of gloves to our stash the next year, and the year after that the kids suggested socks, so we added socks. The list kept growing. The kids were excited about making the food and handing it out. They knew they were doing something valuable, and they could see that it was making a difference by the thank yous they received.

Kids can become very focused on what they “get” during the holidays, and giving back helps balance this out by encouraging them to think about what they give.

Tips for planning your own “give back” tradition:

• Have a family meeting and brainstorm ideas. You can contact your local community services and ask about programs you could donate to or volunteer with, such as food banks or soup kitchens. There are often programs that need volunteers around Christmas time to collect and wrap donated gifts for needy families as well.

• Think small. Often, once we start thinking about it, we can overwhelm ourselves with the multitude of ways we want help out. Try to pick one small thing you can do as a family, and start there. The ideas can grow over the years.

• Let the kids be an active part of the decision-making, and honor their desire to help. If your five-year-old offers to donate his grungy stuffed bunny, tell him that’s a wonderful idea, but suggest that maybe he can pick out a new bunny for a child and he can keep his own.

Remember that every little action counts. It’s not important that you solve the world’s problems; the real lesson is to teach kids to think about others and feel good about helping out.

Do you have an annual holiday tradition in your family that helps teach your kids about giving back? If so, I’d love to hear about it! Share in the ‘Comments’ section below.

And, happy holidays!