I was greeted the other morning by my 6-year-old brightly announcing, “Good morning, Maman. I love helping the homeless. When can we do that again?”
The other evening, my four children and I, along with that 6-year-old’s best friend and her family, helped serve at Blessings Under the Bridge. That was all arranged at the insistence of the two youngest in the group—the 6-year-old and 7-year-old.
They’ve gotten a fair bit of a attention for their plan. They had a blast being interviewed by Caiti Currey and featured on KXLY news earlier this month.
During that interview, Caiti said something along the lines of, “Most kids her age wouldn’t even think of that. She’s so unique! Where does her desire to help come from?”
That surprised me because it’s not our experience at all. Adeline passes people on the side of the road holding signs asking for help and she wants to help. Her best friend Violet passed homeless people on her way home from frequent doctors visits and asked, “Do you think we could buy enough hamburgers for all those people?”
While we helped at Blessings Under the Bridge that night, Jessica Kovac, one of the founders, gave me some insight. I told her about that question and the girls’ desire to help. She pointed out that, while many children do have that desire, it’s often brushed aside and certainly not encouraged.
She’s right. I’ve seen this happening all around me — in religious settings, secular settings, school settings, and home settings. We have to stop and consider what sticking to tradition, or ease, or pure laziness is doing to our children.
If a child wants to help, but we tell them, “No,” because, in our experience, it’s always been done by adults, we are not encouraging them. We are telling the child tradition is more important than they are. Tradition is more important than the ideals we claim to cherish. When the way things have always been done is more valuable to us than the child’s enthusiasm and desire, we likely will not see such eagerness and love for much longer. Does this tradition have a place in our belief system or is it counter to it? Is that tradition actively discouraging children from embracing the moral beliefs we claim to hold dear?
We also need to recognize that our experience may not be universal. Perhaps certain responsibilities are never trusted to children or younger adults in our community, but that does not mean that is the case everywhere. Other communities may actively encourage such things. The way we’ve always done things is representative of our own experiences, not the way of the world or even the best option. Are we mistaking limited experience for tradition or common sense?
One Catholic church never allows anyone under high-school-age to help in during mass. Yet another has a 50-year history of the third graders leading mass on All Saints Day every year. One synagogue never allows anyone under 13 to read Torah. Another celebrates when an 8-year-old does it. A school takes great pride in using the same award-winning lesson plans for thirty years. Another takes a break from their usual plans to teach a lesson on cyber bullying after a group of students bring concerns to their teacher.
For children, the learning process takes time and is often lengthy and even messy. It may be much easier for parents or teachers to take the lead, but at what cost? Working to teach a child to tie their shoes can take hours or even days or weeks. When an adult ties the child’s shoes for them, it takes only a few seconds. Maybe the child has been asking for month to learn how to tie her own shoes. Maybe he has been working hard to master it, but simply hasn’t been able to. It takes far more to encourage the child than to simply take over. It’s easier for parents in the short term, but then the child may never learn that lesson. Learning takes more time now, but if we invest that time and effort, it makes all the difference later.
When a child mentions wanting to have a lemonade stand to raise money for cancer research, parents may be overwhelmed by the thought of the work or cost involved for very little return. When a child wants to hand out money to everyone they see holding a sign that asks for help, we may not have the time or the money. We can’t adopt every dog at the shelter no matter how many times the child asks.
We can’t always follow through with all their helping plans, but we can get to the heart of their desire to encourage that. Maybe we can take the time to help with that lemonade stand even if it only brings in $2 or $3. Perhaps we can add some of our own money to that donation. Sometimes the experience and encouragement is more important than the dollar amount. With the child who wants to hand out money to everyone on the side of the road, we can donate money and help at an organization that serves the homeless. With that dog-loving child, we can check the SCRAPS website for their list of needs and take the child shopping to buy donations to meet those needs.
We do need to be careful to keep them actively involved, though. Setting up an online fundraiser or setting out a box to collect donations from others is easy, but it does not let the children see who they’re helping. It takes little to no effort from the child. We need to make sure we find ways for them to actively work towards repairing the world.
Encouragement isn’t limited to parents. It can make all the difference when children see the adults around them value and applaud their efforts. Our homeschool yearbook has a whole page dedicated to volunteering both in and outside co-op. When I told our director about the Blessings Under the Bridge fundraiser, she created a co-op-wide food and SCRAPS drive so that all the kids and families could help. Being featured on the news was a huge highlight for the girls. The enthusiasm from Caiti Currey and others who saw them on television helped them see that others find what they’re doing is important and necessary. Organizations can find ways for children to help. Grandparents can help build that lemonade stand. Friends and family can donate. Someone can buy a cupcake from a bake sale. Encouragement can be as simple as, “That’s a great idea,” to “Let me help you build that.”
If our moral ideals are truly important to us, encouraging them in our children should be essential.
Children have the natural desire to help. Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) isn’t a high-minded ideal that only occurs to a select group of people. There is no specific religious belief (or any religious belief at all) necessary to encourage helping others. This is not exclusive to a certain level of education or political belief. It’s so simple for children—someone needs help, so you help. To foster that belief and desire to fight for justice, we must encourage them and find ways for them to help.
[…] We first volunteered with Blessings Under the Bridge two years ago at an event set up by our synagogue’s Social Action Tikkun Olam group. Since then, at the insistence of our 6-year-old and her best friend, we’ve become very active with them. Still, I assumed a feature on free books would make my daughter think of her own wants and needs. I was surprised (and ecstatic) that her first thought was of her friends at Blessings Under the Bridge. […]