A friend of mine has managed to raise two amazing little girls with incredibly giving hearts, and she's given me a lot of advice on simple steps that she's taken to instill that. One of the ideas that she gave was around teaching her children to give back to those less fortunate at Christmas. Her method is to have them pick out several gifts from their birthday "haul", set them aside until Christmas, and then donate the gifts to Toys for Tots. The key is for them to understand that they shouldn't pick out their least desired acquisition, but, instead, find something that would truly mean a lot to another little boy or girl their age. Obviously at 1, this is far more difficult of a lesson than they can digest, but the important thing for us was that the tradition start early, knowing that later they'll be able to take pride in the fact that it's something they've done since birth. Since this is all new and we are very concerned that we not appear ungrateful for all of the awesome gifts that the girls recieved this year, Gary and I just picked out a few gifts that were duplicate. Going forward, however, we hope that our children will understand the concept, and can be active participants to sacrifice a gift that they love, but know another child would love also!
We took the girls to the Toys for Tots drop off at my office just after pictures with Santa, and considering how tired they were, we figured that throwing cool new toys into a bin where they can't be retrieved may not go over well...we were very pleased when our girls EAGERLY donated the loot, and weren't at all disappointed to move on (after making their deposits, they had a blast running around the lobby of one of our buildings, and even got to meet our CIO!) Anyway, I know they really had no idea what they were doing, but it made for neat pictures, and allowed us to feel a sense of the true Christmas spirit for ourselves...I know there's so much more we could do, and as the girls get older, I pray that we figure out how and when to be the example that they need, but sometimes it's the simple things that set the foundation, so we hope this makes an impact!
