How to Make Kids Grateful

As the holidays approach, we parents think more about how to make those days meaningful for our children.  Many of us would like to see our children less focused on what they want from Santa and more engaged in the spirit of the holidays, family, togetherness, giving and being grateful for simple joys and experiences.

So how do you instill the modern child with a sense of giving and gratitude?   Not with sermons or moral stories, but with action.  Start by giving the holidays more purpose for your child and inviting him to have a more significant role in the family’s activities during that time of year.

Children learn by doing.  Meaningful life lessons and moral messages are always better transmitted through activity, because then your child can feel the reward that comes with having acted out of a sense of charity, thoughtfulness and generosity, and see the results when lives around him are changed by what he has done.

All children respond more enthusiastically to opportunities to do something meaningful than to receiving toys and other material gifts.  But for the child who has never been invited to give instead of receive, he must first have the experience and its rewards. 

How can you engage your child more in acts of generosity and less in consumerism this season?  Here are some quick and easy tips:

For children under 10:

If your child is 10 or under, he wants to do things that you do.  So, take advantage of this biological advantage, and model the actions you would like to see your child embrace.

• With your child in tow, visit your local United Way and inquire about opportunities to volunteer during the holiday season.  Ask about opportunities that allow children to be involved.
• If you have a passion for cooking, volunteer to cook at a soup kitchen and bring your child along.  Or help your child bake some treats for a charity bake sale.
• If you have fix-it skills, sign up for Habitat for Humanity together and get your child her own toolbelt. 
• If you are a social person, hold party events to support your favorite charity, and invite your child’s help in planning and hosting guests. 
• If you love to sing, find local carolers and bring your child along for a memorable night of delighting others. 
• If you garden, plant vegetables that the two of you can donate to a local food bank. 

Of course, your charitable activities don’t have to be rooted in your own life passions.  Simple acts like bringing blankets and warm clothes to homeless shelters on Christmas Eve, or donating new PJ’s to an orphanage, or volunteering to read stories with children who are in the ICU are all simple but deeply inspiring activities that will permanently transform your child forever and redefine the meaning of the holidays for years to come.

For children over 10:

Tweens and teens respond differently to holidays than young children.  The focus is more on peers and social activity.  Don’t fight this.  Use it to your advantage.

Host a teen charity party.  Your teen won’t believe you are offering your house for a party!  You provide the food and drink, and they ask each attending friend to bring donations for those in need (blankets, PJ’s, canned food, children’s books, etc.)

Combine a sleepover with a late night caroling visit and toy donation at the local hospital’s pediatric ward.  Call ahead to get permission.

Is there harm in having older children look after their younger siblings?

Enlisting the help of older siblings in caring  for younger siblings can be extraordinarily good for everyone *if* those relationships are managed well by parents.  And that is true for managing sibling relationships in general.  Too many parents let siblings “work it out” only to engender victim/predator behaviors and roles that carry forward into adult life.

The harm of having older children look after younger is in doing so haphazardly, without a system or plan to ensure that the burden doesn’t become too great or compromise the needs and ambitions of the older child.  Any action by a parent that fosters resentment or rebellion in a child is misguided.  Children may not always behave well, but they behave honestly.  If you are getting pushback from an older sibling who has been asked to take over some of your parenting duties, it is time to reevaluate your expectations and put more balance, planning and communication into the dynamic

Naturally, needs are different based on the number of siblings involved and their age separation.  But generally speaking, older children are more than willing to assume some parental duties while they are still in the age zone that supports modeling behavior…ages 5-8.  Even a child as young as 5 can provide some support to her parents if invited to help and coached in the skills needed. 

But after 8, a child’s needs and perspective change in key ways, making him more inclined to seek relationships with peers and to look for ways to build a personal unique identity.  It is during the tweens that many older children grow to resent having parental responsibilities, since these often hamper their efforts to socialize and explore new relationships.  And because their younger siblings are so responsive to the model of the older siblings, parents tend to be more critical of older siblings during that sensitive tween/teen phase of trial and error with appearance, ways of speaking, and other forms of self-expression.

With a little structure, parents of multiple children can avoid the common pitfalls of relying on older siblings for help.  Great strategies for building more structure in this experience include:

 Anticipate that between the ages of 8 and 10, your older sibling will want more freedom, opportunity and support in his exploration of self and society.  Offer ever expanding access to these opportunities with each new level of parenting responsibility the child assumes.  This ‘tit for tat’ approach rewards him for contributing by satisfying his most pressing developmental need.

As your younger children grow, offer them opportunities to support their older siblings in key ways.  The benefits of being in a large family and assuming some parenting responsibilities should be that seniority has privileges.  One of these privileges should be that younger siblings assume more tasky, onerous jobs like household chores.  As children move up through the ranks AND show responsibility and devotion to the family, they pass the less enjoyable work on to the younger.

All children respect the seniority pyramid.  It is a natural organizer for both large families and classrooms of children. 

The key to using a seniority cycle for a large group of siblings is that there must be equal opportunity and equal responsibility.  All children should have opportunities to lead, and all children should have duties to fulfill on behalf of and in contribution to the family or household at large.

Parents of many children would benefit from taking the time to build a “staircase” of responsibilities and privileges that each child passes through by demonstrating competency step-by-step.  This is similar to the systems of achievement used by Boy and Girl Scouts.

If older children see that seniority has privileges – not only in terms of more freedom and choice, but in terms of having younger children provide support and assume less desirable duties – they will gladly embrace a system in which they are held accountable as proxy parents.

Large families can barely survive intact without some form of regular family meeting or mode of communication.  Weekly or bi-weekly meetings (preferably over pizza or something fun, and with a fun activity to look forward to…like movie night) should involve everyone and should be run much the way they would be in a large corporation.  Everyone, even down to the Kindergartner – should be encouraged to submit items for a family meeting agenda and to come prepared to discuss their concerns.  Rotational leadership incites everyone to prepare and behave respectfully, and keeping things short, focused and impactful plants seeds for positive feelings about meetings in the future.  Each member of the family can have rotational roles, such as peacekeeper, timekeeper, or – my favorite – “Love Captain” (whose job is to make sure everyone in the meeting feels loved and appreciated).

Downside

Both older and younger children can suffer in a large family if everything is left to chance and whimsical decisionmaking.  Younger children can develop deep-seated feelings of insecurity and fear of abandonment, if they sense that their older siblings are in charge but distracted and unconcerned.  Small children grow into children with poor self-esteem if they do not always feel that they are protected and loved.  So putting older siblings in charge without ensuring a strict level of care and watchfulness can turn out badly in the long-run.

Older children lack the ability to manage their emotions and reactions to misbehavior, and are much more likely to lose control and act out against a screaming baby or toddler.  Busy parents of big families are not likely to notice if an older sibling lashes out against a toddler in the throes of a tantrum.  This dynamic is quite dangerous long-term.  Older children can learn behaviors that they will carry forward in other nurture-based relationships.  Younger children can grow resentful toward the parents out of a sense of abandonment and vulnerability.  Also, younger children who feel unprotected and potentially endangered by the neglectful care of an older sibling are likely to assert themselves and become bullyish and physically confrontational with other children at school.

Bye-Bye Baby Einstein – Now Can we Please Stop the Hype?

Baby Einstein is exactly what it was designed to be – a shiny object to babysit a screaming infant or toddler. 

The children watching Baby Einstein were in many respects smarter than its creators  – not only did they know they were being babysat by a video, but they also knew they really craved recognizable human relationship and some good old fashioned nurturing. 

Yes, small children are fascinated with objects, often the simplest ones.  However, just because everything is fascinating for infants and toddlers because all of it is new, that is not a premise for a learning tool. 

Finally, Some Informed Perspective on Hyped Products?

Getting on Oprah and being hyped as the greatest thing since sliced bread doesn’t mean a product will help your child magically become brilliant.  Parents have been subjected to an endless parade of quick fixes and of all the people specializing in children, parents are often the least informed.  It most likely took a group of scared lawyers at Disney to inject some reality into the hoopla over Baby Einstein, and perhaps we can finally bridge that gap between hype and help to empower parents when it comes to products that benefit children and ones that don’t.

Two Alternatives for Real Learning

1.       Children need to “own” their learning experience

The most meaningful learning for infants and toddlers takes place when they “own” the experience through touching, smelling, tasting and interacting.  Children don’t want to be forced to explore objects in a decided sequence that they don’t control.  Instead, parents should let them explore freely, because exploration is a direct byproduct of the natural human cognitive growth process. 

Products like Baby Einstein completely miss this point.  Sure, the video presents interesting objects but when someone else besides the parent or child himself decides which objects are presented, for how long and in what manner – that is worst teaching tool possible for a small child.  They simply get frustrated and learn little or nothing.

2.       More Stories and Context

Even Albert Einstein himself likely knew that context made a story logical to his adult audiences.  It’s even more important for small children.  

Plotline, character development, continuity, predictable behaviors….they may sound sophisticated, but they are essential for intellectual growth in young children, and that is why books, videos, role play, theater and any presentation of life in artistic form is best when it relies at least partly on story. 

Story is what gets it to all make sense for a young child, for whom every iota of human behavior is still new and fresh. 

Parents should repeatedly encourage learning through story, so a child can take the bits and pieces he does recognize and use those to make sense of what he doesn’t.  Baby Einstein – which only presents long strings of random images – flunks the storyline test.