Generosity and kindness are important qualities that all parents strive to instill in children. Being incredibly generous will make you a better leader and more successful in work and life. Cultivating these habits at an early age is a very straightforward process. Organizations like Real Parenting Lab are even launching courses for parents who want to boost gratitude and empathy in their kids. Before you enroll in a course or hire a generosity consultant, check out these three ways to foster generosity in kids.
Create a culture of helping
Toddlers love helping. Sure, my son’s help is imperfect and often leads to my doing twice the work, but he loves simple household chores like taking out the garbage, sweeping the floor, and he literally cheers when I finish vacuuming. Build on this spirit of generosity by encouraging your child/children to help neighbours with garbage removal, dog-walking, or planting a garden. I strongly recommend bringing your child to visit a grandparent or aunt/uncle in a seniors’ care facility – it’s a joyful and entertaining experience for everyone!
Homemade kindness
Cultivate authentic gift-giving by baking cookies with your child or supervising the glue while they craft a card for a friend. The simple act of giving a homemade gift deepens our understanding of gratitude and, research shows, can even reduce anxiety in kids. As one of my friends said, “When it comes to giving away their own handiwork, my kids are all over it!”
Understand charitable giving
This might be a stretch, especially for parents whose kids have pretty basic (or non-existent) understanding of money, like my two-year-old does. I asked several of my values-based-banking colleagues for advice and heard dozens of awesome stories about how allocating allowance to charities or participating in holiday toy drives fosters a sense of gratitude for what we have and what others might need. I even met a 10-year-old who asked me how to transform her lemonade stand into a social enterprise (this is an aspirational kind of giving, folks!).
However you cultivate generosity and kindness with your kid(s), be sure to make it a family affair and model charitable giving and/or volunteering in the most awesome ways possible!
This is my son helping out his grandparents’ friends by wheelbarrowing some hay to his new friend, Chester the Horse.