Changing the Focus of Our Families this Holiday Season

This truly is the most wonderful time of the year. I love the focus on service and gratitude and the potential to teach these things to our children. I never think it lasts long enough, but it’s important to take advantage of all the opportunities we have to serve.

Helping our children focus on something more than the gifts they hope to receive can be a challenge… it can seem downright impossible. We are bombarded with commercial after commercial advertising the latest gadgets, toys, and clothes.

How do you counteract that and change the focus from ‘to: me’ to “from: me’?

Providing our children with plenty of opportunities to serve and planning activities as a family to serve is a way to continually help our children stay grounded amidst all the crazy consumerism. It can be easier than you think.

Sometimes our drawback is that we don’t know who needs help or how best to give it. A little time browsing the internet, phone book, or even just looking around your community will provide you with all you need to know.

Some basic ideas for serving with your family can include:

-???????? Local food bank

-???????? United Way

-???????? Local Shelter or soup kitchen

-???????? Retirement home

-???????? Children’s hospital

-???????? Serving your neighbors

-???????? Serving in your families (as seen in this post here)

For a longer list of ideas including websites download this Google Doc:

What does your family do to serve? Do you notice a change in your children’s focus when you do serve?

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Serving Within Your Families

We often think about this time of the year and wonder who we can serve – who we can help. We think about our neighbors or even the homeless, but I think we could do a lot of good by looking within our families as well. We could help our children forge lasting bonds with each other by helping them learn to love through service. We could renew our love with our spouses and remember the love we have for our children (even though they can be frustrating at times) by feeling the love that comes through serving them.

Think for a moment just how wonderful, happy, and full of love you feel when you do a good deed. We often associate those feelings with the person holding the cardboard sign or the widow in the neighborhood – imagine how much kinder and patient you’d be if you felt those feelings for each and every member of your family every day.

It can seem difficult to get your children to understand why they should do something for a sibling, but if you make it a family effort and if you make it fun your children will grow to love and look forward to serving each other.

Some ideas for service within your family include:

- Make a ‘pay it forward’ pass-along card for your children to leave when they’ve done something kind. The card is then taken and passed on with another act of service to another member of the family.
- Encourage your children to help set up for a sibling’s birthday dinner or breakfast
- Help your children make breakfast for Mother’s/Father’s Day
- Encourage your children to make cards and gifts for Christmas and birthdays
- Have a day each month where your family can write secret notes to each other
- Do a ‘Secret Santa’ each year within your family
- Fill a manger with straw for each good deed leading up to Christmas

Always remember that whatever you can do to encourage service within your family will strengthen the bonds your children have with you and with each other. Nothing helps us love more than service.

Do your children enjoy doing things for each other? What are some fun things you have done with your children to encourage service within your family? How did your children react?

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Five Filters featured article: Beyond Hiroshima - The Non-Reporting of Falluja's Cancer Catastrophe.

View the original article here

Serving Within Your Families

We often think about this time of the year and wonder who we can serve – who we can help. We think about our neighbors or even the homeless, but I think we could do a lot of good by looking within our families as well. We could help our children forge lasting bonds with each other by helping them learn to love through service. We could renew our love with our spouses and remember the love we have for our children (even though they can be frustrating at times) by feeling the love that comes through serving them.

Think for a moment just how wonderful, happy, and full of love you feel when you do a good deed. We often associate those feelings with the person holding the cardboard sign or the widow in the neighborhood – imagine how much kinder and patient you’d be if you felt those feelings for each and every member of your family every day.

It can seem difficult to get your children to understand why they should do something for a sibling, but if you make it a family effort and if you make it fun your children will grow to love and look forward to serving each other.

Some ideas for service within your family include:

- Make a ‘pay it forward’ pass-along card for your children to leave when they’ve done something kind. The card is then taken and passed on with another act of service to another member of the family.
- Encourage your children to help set up for a sibling’s birthday dinner or breakfast
- Help your children make breakfast for Mother’s/Father’s Day
- Encourage your children to make cards and gifts for Christmas and birthdays
- Have a day each month where your family can write secret notes to each other
- Do a ‘Secret Santa’ each year within your family
- Fill a manger with straw for each good deed leading up to Christmas

Always remember that whatever you can do to encourage service within your family will strengthen the bonds your children have with you and with each other. Nothing helps us love more than service.

Do your children enjoy doing things for each other? What are some fun things you have done with your children to encourage service within your family? How did your children react?

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured article: Beyond Hiroshima - The Non-Reporting of Falluja's Cancer Catastrophe.

View the original article here