Teach Your Kids the Joys of Giving

What better time for parents to teach their kids the joys of giving than at Advent, when secular society focuses solely on preparing “wish lists” to recite to Santa but Catholic families can instead take this opportunity to instill a lifelong appreciation for generosity and living simply. Throughout December, Moms and dads can start helping their children understand that as we have been given so much from God, so we should give. As exciting as it feels when we open our Christmas presents, it is joyful and virtue-instilling when we put aside our own needs and wants and in its place focus on both giving to others and giving up things.

If your family is already living near the poverty-level-line, your sons and daughters don’t need to be taught about the dangers of consumerism and the greediness of accumulating too many toys and clothes. You are already “living simply” out of necessity.  However, with each generation seeming to live more lavishly and to spend more money on superfluous goods than the generation preceding them, it’s rare to find a 21^st Century family where the parents aren’t having to sternly remind their children, “No, you don’t need one more thing!”

When I was a principal, there was one “old-fashioned” mom at our school whom I admired for the impressive, counter-cultural actions she took to teach her son and daughter about the virtue of living simply and not clamoring for more stuff. First off, this school mom explained how her family rule was a new toy was never given at Christmas, birthdays, or on random occasions until the child donated a currently owned toy to the church’s St. Vincent de Paul Society. Thus, their toybox never piled up with multiple toys, most of which lost their luster years ago and just collected dust anyway, since for every new toy added in, an old toy had to be sent out. 

Secondly, this mom enlightened me on how she didn’t go to the store every October to buy her kids new Halloween costumes. Rather, to teach her kids a lesson on the temptations of consumerism, each year their old Halloween costumes were repurposed by using pieces from years prior and figuring out how these parts – plus the bolt of brown fabric she had in storage – could be reimagined and re-sewn for a different look. For example, one year she fashioned a monk costume for her son and a pirate costume for her daughter out of the brown fabric, and the next year the fabric and old costume pieces were used to create a teddy bear and an M&M costume (brown-colored, of course). Don’t ask me to explain how this was done, but her artistic flair and imagination, combined with her desire to teach her children how to live simply, made it work. 

By setting up these two basic systems with her kids regarding toys and costumes, the mom taught them to be mindful of the fact that money is not an infinite resource, as well as to remind them that some people in the world have next to nothing so they should be satisfied, if not grateful, to have just a few toys and recycled costumes. It would be wonderful if more parents would try to copy this school mom’s strategies. 

My own mom never had to incorporate any brilliant ideas to teach my siblings and me about the value of frugality, as our circumstances necessitated we live a simple, humble life.  When my dad died suddenly at the age of 46, my mom found herself with no income and needing to provide for five kids ages 4-17. She first started a large daycare in our home to bring in some money, and later found a job making school lunches in the kitchens of the local public schools. She chose this job because her hours would be school hours and thus she wouldn’t have to worry about daycare. Plus, a side benefit of this job was my mom was able to bring home to us some half-pints of “expired” milk and other school lunch fare that was not eaten by students and was going to be thrown out by the kitchen staff. 

Since a few small cartons of milk and some leftover tacos would only take us so far, my mom would also buy boxes of powdered milk, conjure up hot dogs and government cheese as the toppings on her homemade pizza dinners, and fry bologna in lieu of bacon for our breakfast protein. Along with these efforts to save money on food, my mom also raised my siblings and me with the understanding we would never have as many toys, clothes, and opportunities than our friends. When my much more well-off classmates talked about heading out to Saturday ski school, I was content with staying home and playing catch with my brother, knowing that my mom could never afford to have us engage in expensive acts like skiing.

Even though I grew up in a family of five children in a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house with one TV, one car, the cheapest of food, few toys, and no expensive hobbies, I never recall being unhappy about our financial situation, thanks to how my mother raised us. On a typical Sunday, my mom would drive my siblings and me to church for Mass, followed by stopping at the cemetery to “visit” my dad, and ending with a treat. Now, my thrifty mom’s version of a treat didn’t include buying us anything. No, she would simply drive to the K-mart a few blocks away from the cemetery and let my brother and me race through the store to see who was the first to locate the flashing blue-light-special. (Only those who were raised in the 1960s and 70s will understand what a K-mart and a blue-light-special were.) We never did the usual begging for a toy like you often see kids do nowadays in stores, because we knew our mom had no extra money. We were trained to be content with living simply, and a “window-shopping field trip” to K-mart was all we needed.

Whether your family lives frugally out of necessity like mine did when I was growing up or whether you are well-off but chose to steer clear of materialism through your purposeful choices, it is worthwhile to get across to your youngsters that there is virtue in living simply and in giving more than receiving.  An additional way parents can help instill this virtue is through how one chooses to properly pray.

Your sons and daughters will probably agree that when they hear people start a prayer, most often they go straight to the asking-for-something part, such as, “Dear God, please heal me…” or “Dear God, please help my team win…” What is important to teach your children is, while there is most assuredly a place in prayer for asking, it needs to come after we first honor God, praise God, thank God, and pray for others’ needs. 

Moms and dads would do well to model for their children the proper way to pray. Do your youngsters hear you first praise and honor God as our creator and Jesus as our savior when you’re leading grace at dinner or saying nighttime prayers out loud? They should overhear you thanking God for the beauty around you as well as the many blessings you enjoy – even if those blessings consist of merely hot dog pizza and K-mart fieldtrips. They should also hear how mindful you are of the needs of others as you pray for a sick relative, for a friend who needs a job, or for those affected by a natural disaster. Only after noting all these parts of the prayer time that included prayers of honor, praise, thanks, and petitions for others, is it then the time that you ask God for something for yourselves. 

Hopefully, youngsters will imitate their parents when they have their own personal prayer time with our Lord. To help your little ones remember the importance of giving before receiving in how they pray (that is, by praising and thanking God before asking God for something for themselves), consider having your family create an opening stanza of prayer that you all memorize and regularly use as part of your grace before meals or when saying bedtime prayers. For example, a prayer script could begin each time with these same few sentences, before inserting one’s own specific need:

“Lord God, we humbly come before you with grateful hearts for all you have given us. Thank you for creating us, for creating the beauty around us, and for gifting us with a loving family and wonderful friends. Please help those who are struggling, especially….”

The virtue of selfless giving is most noticeably witnessed by children when they see mom and dad put aside their own needs and instead drop money into a collection plate, donate to a charity, resist obsessive consumerism, and most importantly worship and give thanks to our Lord. If your kids can be led to mimic you by donating their used toys, by not needing to buy the fanciest Halloween costume or partake in expensive interests, and by praying for others’ needs before their own, they will eventually develop into selfless young adults who acknowledge that everything they have that is important in life comes from their Heavenly Father.