The Reason For The Season: How To Get Kids Giving

Updated March 25, 2023

To build and maintain that giving glow, it's time to make giving habitual. Instead of a one-off Thanksgiving food drive donation, giving should be a consistent practice in families throughout the year. It is proven that even tiny, but regular, efforts in giving can help set your child up for a lifetime of empathy, generosity and compassion. Giving is important.

3 Ways to Get Your Child to Give Back

1. One act of giving

Set a goal for your family and focus on one act of giving each month. Most importantly, involve your littles in every step of the process.

One example: Together with your child, choose an hour to sort through their outgrown clothes or gently used toys and books. (Disclaimer: Suddenly a toy your kiddo has not touched in months, will likely become their most prized possession. It's par for the course !) Select items in good condition to pass along to children in need. With your mini in tow, drop off at a local shelter, Salvation Army or Goodwill. And explain: “Your outgrown clothes, toys and books will make another child so happy. I'm sure your favorite snow boots will keep their next owner extra cozy this winter. Thank you for sharing your things with a kid who really needs them.”

2. Give locally

By giving locally, kids can see firsthand how their time or dollars can make real change in their world. When they donate food they have picked out and purchased (with their Give dollars from allowance!) from the nearby grocery store to their local food pantry, they feed their neighbors in need.

When they give their time to walk in solidarity for social justice, they fight for equality in their communities and beyond. When they serve food at their nearby soup kitchens, they feed the hungry outside their doorsteps.

Giving locally allows young children to experience how their dollars, donations or service results in impactful change right in their own backyard.

3. Follow their passions to give

We can also encourage kids to give by harnessing their passions and interests and focusing on causes that are important to them.

Obsessed with animals? Explore a local farm sanctuary and help groom her generosity.

Adores the outdoors? Perhaps the Nature Conservancy can cultivate his giving.

Foodie in the making? Feed America could whet her giving appetite.

By tapping into our children's inherent interests, it's easier, and more natural, for kids to get started giving.

The key to inspiring a lifetime of giving is to start early. From a very young age, children have strong instincts to share and help others. As parents, we need to capture this inherent generosity and sense of fairness and help our kids stretch their giving muscles in small, but meaningful ways. It's our job to provide kids the opportunities to give, and when they do, the happy feeling they get encourages them to do it again.

Let's come up with a way that we can help our neighbors in need or give to a cause we are passionate about. Do you have any ideas?