Ep #55: 5 Ways to Get Kids Excited About Giving

Hello my friends, I am so excited to get to sit and chat with you about this today because we are getting close to the Christmas and holiday season here and we are going to talk about giving. Now, I think when we talk about giving, I think all of us have this desire to have our kids excited about giving. We think there’s value in it. We want our kids to be kind people that are good at giving. But what about the benefits that actually come to our children? So this has been really interesting.

I’ve been doing some research the past few weeks about giving. And there’s been some interesting research around giving time, around giving other things. So we’re going to get into that a little bit today. We’re going to talk about some of the research around giving and how it impacts your child as they learn to give. And then we’re going to talk about an article put out by Berkeley, the university, and we’re going to talk about the five things that they say that help our children learn to love giving, which is great. Because then it’s not us making them do it, which, as it turns out, kind of takes away some of the benefits of them giving anyway.

So let’s talk about how we help them get the most out of their giving, both because they’re making a difference in the world and because it’s affecting them. And then how we help them do that because they love it and so it becomes a part of who they are. Alright, it’s going to be an amazing chat. Let’s get into it.

So there is a lot of research around giving. This has been something that’s been studied extensively both in adults and in children. And one of the studies that I found the most fascinating was actually for very young children, two years old. And they were giving the children, they were in this environment where they had basically goldfish and there were puppets involved. The researcher would just find a goldfish and hand it to a child. And the child could give it to the puppet and the puppet was excited, whatever.

And they were measuring levels of happiness of different things, if the child ate the goldfish themselves, or if they gave it to the puppet and different things. And then they did another one where there was a limited number of goldfish. You only had a limited amount that was yours. And then would the child eat the goldfish or gift the puppet one of their personal goldfish? And what was really interesting that they found out, both in the scenario where children were giving the goldfish to the puppet that the researcher had just found.

And when the child was giving a goldfish that was from their own personal limited quantity. In both cases, their happiness increased by that giving. But what was really cool and really fascinating was when a child gave from their own personal stash of goldfish, their own collection, their limited quantity of their own goldfish. Their happiness increased even more than when they were giving a goldfish that the researcher had just randomly given them. So giving, it turns out, makes us happier, both as adults and even in very young children.

And what’s really neat is that young children actually are very good at giving. We’ve done a lot of research around the world to show that kids love to give. And so this is the thing that we want to nurture in them, both for their own wellbeing and their own happiness, as well as the impact they’re able to create in the world.

Now in this article that was put out by Berkeley in their Greater Good publication, they talked about these five different things that we do to kind of help children learn to love giving. So let’s get into those because I think they’re really valuable and something that we can implement or at least take one of these pieces and work on at least one piece, every little bit counts.

So the first one is modeling the behavior. And there was a study that said, this was a study done for adolescents. They were 18% more likely to donate money to a charitable organization if their parents had made any donation of their own in the past year. So they’re watching us, but here’s what’s really interesting. So we have this idea that actions speak louder than words which we know. But here’s what’s really cool. When it comes to giving as it turns out, you need both. So listen to this research.

So adolescents were 18% more likely to donate money to a charitable organization if their parents had in the past year. But if a parent had made a donation and talked about it with their child and talked to their child about giving, that child was 33% more likely to donate. So that’s an increase of 15 percentage points from just doing it ourselves. So giving ourselves and showing our children that we are giving, increases the likelihood that they are going to give.

But if we give and we talk about giving, we talk about the importance of that, that increases it by an additional 15%, which is a pretty substantial amount. Volunteer work was similar. So adolescents whose parent did volunteer work were 27% more likely to volunteer and 47% more likely if their parent also talked about generosity with them. Isn’t that interesting? So we want to give of our time, we want to give, but we also want to talk about with our children why we’re doing that and those words and actions matter.

Let’s go onto number two. So helping children understand the need. I think this is really fascinating. Mt kids came home last year, my daughter says to me, “We’re collecting food for the poor.” And I just felt this immediate sense of disconnection from what was actually happening. And so it wasn’t that she was trying to do something wrong, it felt like a disconnect. And so I said, “Actually, what we’re doing is we’re collecting food for the hungry.” And suddenly she had this immediate connection point with who we were collecting food for.

So it was just the poor, who is the poor? What does that even mean? What is that group? How do you relate to that? What are the outlines of that? It was just that wasn’t something she understood as a small child. But when I said, “We’re collecting food for the hungry.” Well, she’s been hungry before. She knows about hungry. She wants food when she’s hungry. And suddenly she was like, “Oh, we need to feed the hungry.” And so I said, “You know, what’s really interesting? You’re hungry too. People who are hungry, need food.”

And I said, “The difference is that when you’re hungry, you go to the fridge and you get food or you go to the pantry and you get food or you tell mom and I can get you food. And there’s some people that when they’re hungry, there’s no food in their fridge or there’s no food in their pantry. And so what we’re doing is we’re just making sure they have food in their pantry, in their refrigerator.” And so she suddenly became very passionate about the project because she was like, “No, people should not be hungry. This is not good.”

And so I think when we help them understand what the need is and try to help them have a connection point to it, they are so much more engaged. It matters to them because they can connect with it. In the article put out by Berkeley, they talk about how kids have this really strong propensity for empathy. It’s evident in very early stages of life and that’s so good and valuable. But one of the things we need to do is help them see the world through the eyes of other people and find common connections with others.

One of the best ways to do this is by actually talking to other people and getting to know them and help them just understand other people’s stories and hear more stories. They also recommend us just bringing up conversations with our children, what needs are you seeing in our community? What things do you think people might be needing right now? What kinds of things do you think might be happening out there that are needs or that we could help with?

And then we move into the next step that they recommend and that is helping them see the impact. There is a significant finding from studies of adults that say that we get greater happiness from generosity and are much more motivated to give again if we’re able to see the impact it has on others. And you guys, I’ve experienced this myself, when we have done different charitable work or given to non-profits, it is so much more impactful if you get to be in the front row and see the impact it’s having. It’s just powerful.

So for children, this can be difficult because sometimes we’re giving money, and you give money and then it kind of goes into this bank account somewhere. And then it’s kind of hard to see the impact of that. And so one of the things that they recommend in the article is particularly with our younger children where money is more just kind of a random concept they don’t really get or understand or value that highly yet. What we can do is actually take our kids, instead of maybe just donating money to the food bank.

We can go and take our kids to the store and we help them pick out some nutritious food that we could then take to the food bank. And help them actually be involved in giving something real and something substantial, something tangible, I guess, that they understand.

And I think this kind of plays into the next piece, the next one, number four, which is make it a part of who they are. And I love this because the research has shown that we will protect our identity with everything we have. And if we’re trying to be something that we don’t feel like we are, that is making it so hard to develop a gym habit. If you’ve never had one before, if you don’t identify as a gym person, it can be so hard to make that a thing. But if it’s something that’s who we are, we’re like, “Oh, I haven’t been to the gym in a week, I’m not okay.”

So if it’s part of your identity, it’s something that you just protect. And so how do we make giving a part of who our children are? And so again, research suggests that when people give away something that’s of greater personal meaning or significance to themselves, they feel more committed. They’re more invested. They’re more committed to this cause. And so it doesn’t have to be really abstract or something really far outside of your life. It doesn’t have to just be, I’m raising money for this charity across the world, that I have no idea what it is.

And I have found sometimes in different phases of my life sometimes it’s easier to give money than time. It kind of depends on where you are. So there’s been times when I’m like, “It’s so much easier to give time or something I can do like a service than it is to give money because I just didn’t have money.” And then when I had more money sometimes it was easier to just give money and not my time because my time was so valuable. So kind of where I’ve ended up now is trying to find a way to do a little bit of both.

And I think this is so good for kids to see us doing. And then try to help them find ways to do it in their life and what that looks like for them. So one thing that I’m doing right now is that I donate or I donate my time, which is my most valuable asset that I have right now. But I get to go and play the piano for our school choir. Because we have a school choir and there’s 60 kids in this choir and it’s amazing and we have the most amazing choir director. And I get to go and play the piano for them. And that’s a time gift that I give every week.

It’s so personal because I get to give of the talent that I have, which is playing the piano, and I get to give of my time, which is my most valuable thing. And it is so rewarding and just really beautiful. And my kids get to see me do it because now my kids actually get to benefit from the choir, which is really cool. I have kids in the choir. But I love it because it’s something that I love. I love music. I love playing the piano. I love kids. I love all of these things. And so it’s such a good natural fit for me and it’s a way for me to make a difference and help my community and get to do something that’s just kind of fun and kind of neat.

So what can our kids do that fits with what they already love, what they’re already into? And at different ages this might look different. Can they help with some art or some coloring for a local party? Can they help play with someone’s kids for a little bit while they’re busy wrapping Christmas presents or something? What can they do that fits them and is natural to them?

And again in the article, they say that philanthropy that’s integrated with what a child is interested in or passionate about tends to stick. It tends to stick better. It tends to be something they’re more willing to do and can do over time, which is where they get the benefits as they keep going on and on and on.

Okay, the last one and I think this is a really big one. So we can just kind of absorb this for a second, is that kids need to have the choice. So they need choice. There has been a lot of times when we’re trying to get kids excited about service and then maybe they’re not excited about it yet. And we kind of try to make them do it. The challenge is that there’s a lot of evidence that suggests that those efforts might actually backfire.

So decades of research showed that when people are forced to do something kind for others or even subtly coerced to do it through an external reward, they actually see themselves as less altruist. And so they’re going to be less motivated to help people in the long run. So it backfires and it’s tricky then. So how do we do it? Because we feel like we’re doing a reward system, encouraging people to give because we’re going to give this award to whoever gives the most or whatever. But we might actually be making kids less likely to give when we do that.

So the studies show that people feel happier after performing kind, helpful, or prosocial acts only when those acts are voluntary and self-directed. Instead, when they feel pressured to help, they actually feel worse. So giving our kids choice, encouraging them to give but allowing them to kind of say what that looks like, how much they give, what they want to give, what that looks like, giving them that power and that control can make a big difference in the wellbeing of the giver afterwards.

So it’s going to make a huge difference in how much of that goodness they get afterwards and their likelihood to continue giving. And this is again where it sticks long term, because we’re not going to be around when our kids are adults to continue to encourage them to give and offer them some little award if they give the most. We want them to give because it’s part of who they are. It’s part of their identity because they love that feeling of making a difference. Because they feel happier after they give.

So here’s what I’m going to encourage you to think about. Is there a conversation you could have with your kids around the importance of giving, the value of it, the difference it can make for others and the difference it makes for you? Because as we learned from this article, talking about it is critically important as well as modeling the behavior. So we do some giving ourselves, giving of our time.

And what’s interesting, I read some other research recently that said that when we give time, we actually get more done. So this blew my mind, you guys, because like I told you, time is my thing. It’s my scarcest resource. And so I’m like, “I just don’t have time.” But this article said that the research they’ve done, when you give time, you actually end up getting more done. They have studied it. And so maybe it’s because we’re happier. Maybe because we’re feeling more motivated or I don’t know, we’ve got all these feel goods inside of us and we’re just more efficient, but we actually get more done if we gift our time.

So think about how you’re going to give. And we can do this in the month of December or throughout the next year. How do you do that? How are you modeling it for your kids? What conversations are you having? And then when we’re encouraging our kids to give, because it’s important to encourage them, but are we giving them the space to decide what that looks like? How much are they giving? What does it look like? What pieces of them, what unique parts of them could they contribute into the world? What could that look like? Which is such a fun thing to think about and so empowering for them as well.

So that’s what I’m going to encourage you to do. And I’m going to commit to thinking about this even more myself. I try to give this part of my life, but this has been a good reminder for me that there’s more work to be done. And so I’m going to work on this too. And I can’t wait for us to get to see the results in our happiness level and in the difference and impact that we’re able to make as we give more this next month and throughout the next year. Have the most amazing rest of your day and I will see you here next week on this Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast.

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Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website planningplaytime.com. See you next week.