On Giving Back

There is a song from the 80s called The 12 pains of Christmas. I’ve put in on the playlist for the sight for those of you who want to hear it. It has to be one of my favorite Christmas songs, and some of the complaints are not relevant any more, but most are. I thought about the song this year because there is a kid in there that for the 8th day of Christmas says, “I WANNA TRANSFORMER FOR CHRISTMAS!!!!”; “DADDY, I WANT SOME CANDY!!!!”; “BUY ME SOMETHIN'!!!”; “DAD, I GOTTA GO TA BATHROOM!!”; “WAAAAAAAAAAH! WAAAAAAAAAAH!” This is sadly a lot like Jena this year, especially the “Buy me something.” In the context of the song, the 7th day is about all the charities at Christmas. In fact, one line goes:

The eighth thing at Christmas that such a pain to me:
I WANNA TRANSFORMER FOR CHRISTMAS!!!!
Charities….

Which gets me to the point of this post, giving back at Christmas and teaching me kids how to do it. This year during shopping, even before Christmas, Jena always says, “I want that!” When I tell her no she follows with, “But I REALLLLY Want it, PLEASE!” Keep in mind we have a room in our house JUST FOR THEIR TOYS! And then they have toys in their rooms.

So we have been working on teaching Jena that she is indeed a lucky little girl. How do you teach a 3 year old that? I’m open to suggestions. The girls really have it good, they have it better than Roger and I did growing up. And neither of us wants them to turn into those annoying kids we went to school with. You know who I’m talking about; the ones that had all the latest and greatest stuff and let you know it. Or the obnoxious kids whose parents gave them 100 bills to go shopping with when I was in college, working at the mall for minimum wage.

We have started early teaching them how to give back and saying no to their constant begging. Every year we get a child from the Angel Tree at church. We also made cookies for the soup kitchen this week and this year, I took the girls to Toys R Us and had Jena pick toys to give away. She was okay with that, until she asked for something for herself and I told her no. We managed okay for the rest of the trip and she even, Happily, put our purchases in the bin.

A woman got into line behind us at check out. She said, “I’ll be glad when Christmas is over.” I smile, recognizing a fellow mom and asked “How many kids do you have?” She told me she is a single mom with a son and he wanted a transformer and she got that one because it could be taken apart and the one at Wal-Mart couldn’t. I agreed that was important. She commented it was expensive and looked apprehensive. I told her I was sure her son would love it. So there you go, I was trying to teach my kids a lesson about life and got one myself.