Teaching your kids generosity this festive season

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. With the kids jingle belling and everyone telling you be of good cheer. There is a popular Christmas songs with lyrics like this. Children particularly love Christmas because it comes with tons of excitement, fun, merriment and food, says parenting and family life coach, Elizabeth Ajetunmobi.

Being one of the most popular and widely celebrated seasons around the world, the season of Christmas emits an aura of joy and happiness; and this is absolutely the best period to educate your child on the significance of the season.

“Giving as an act is one of the all-time Christmas traditions and as a means of acknowledging the season and instilling core values, it is necessary that kids learn and imbibe acts of giving and the right time to show them what generosity entails is now.”

The parenting enthusiast and educator noted that there are so many ways we could teach kids to show acts of giving. One of them is through donating to charity. During Christmas, lots of fundraisers for charity are put up by organisers to support people in need and so you could foster the act of giving by educating your child about donating to charity.

This is one way to express generosity. It could be as small as giving out a winter coat or as highly significant as designing gift cards and presents for the less privileged. They could give out their old toys too. These acts go a long way in validating the importance of generosity.

The mum of three stressed that parents can also teach kids generosity through their acts of service. “Sometimes, children are a reflection of how you are as a parent. They exhibit traits that are mostly performed around them. You could capitalise on this to teach your kids the act of giving. Hence, parents should do well to lead by example by influencing the acts of giving in little ways around the children.

“This is a perfect way to set the pace for generosity among children. Kids who come from homes with magnanimous parents would likely do well as good givers because they had been nurtured that way overtime. If you want to raise a generous kid, then you have to be a generous parent.”

In addition, Ajetunmobi said that kids should be taught how to be generous with their time too which includes engaging in productive activities like volunteering, coming up with ideas for Christmas Carols, attending Christmas carols, making Christmas cards and gift bags for their teachers, making cookies for their friends and a whole lot of productive activities that involve giving out time.