Have Less, Do More

One of the highlights my month is the Parent's Association meeting at my daughter's school. Are you as surprised as I am? But listen to yesterday's agenda: a professional violinist, a graduate of the school, opened the meeting by playing a locally made violin that is being auctioned off at the school's upcoming benefit. Then the majority of the meeting was a cheerleading drill/testimony meeting dedicated to the concept of family community service. I left in tears.

I've been trying to figure out why, since moving to Utah, I've had a sudden drive towards humanitarian service. I think it's a combination of a few factors. First, the whole move to Utah was motivated by the desire to pare down: to jump off the rat race and focus not on acquiring material things but on our family. That shifted focus has allowed me to feel comfortable looking outward rather than worrying about how my little family is going to get by. Second, I have small children at home. I have learned that if you say "jump", no person will jump higher than a mother will for children. Any children. Children that stare out from the websites of humanitarian service organizations. Or from the pages of Newsweek. I'll never forget, one afternoon soon after Esme was born, flipping through the pages of a Newsweek issue and landing on a photograph of Iraqi children being torn from their parents. I crumpled to the ground, begging God out loud to help them. It wasn't just my new-mom hormones: That was the first time I'd had that reaction to global suffering, but it wasn't the last.

Third, I've landed on service as the key to teaching my own children self-worth, compassion, and their place as a child of God on this earth. To this point, I've started dedicating each of our weekly Family Home Evenings to small service projects. I had started to dread Family Home Evening, our church's suggested weekly family time, because I couldn't seem to come up with entertaining yet meaningful lessons that went beyond the "Ok, so how can we be nicer to each other this week?" triteness. Then I found Merrilee Boyack's book 52 Weeks of Fun Family Service and it set me on fire. From October till now, we have applied for UNICEF boxes and collected money for UNICEF with our trick-or-treating; learned about the Ronald McDonald House and decorated cans in which to collect soda can tabs to donate to them; written "thank you" notes to various people; and visited older neighbors with cookies. I'm already looking forward to compiling hygiene kits for Mothers Without Boarders, recording childrens books (now that Esme can read!) and delivering them to Head Start programs... I think we'll easily fill a year's worth of Family Home Evenings!

Boyack hooked me in her introduction to her book when she says, "Children naturally begin their lives as very egocentric beings. This helps them survive.... As they get older, they gain an increasing awareness of the world around them and -- hopefully -- begin to lose that self-centeredness.... To help them through the process, we teach and train in the home, but we must also deal with what goes on outside the home -- namely, a society that is obsessed with materialism and self-absorption, and a culture that constantly demands 'more' and 'better.'"

And so I was captivated at the school Parent's Association meeting when three mothers explained in detail how they have tried to help their children through this process of moving from egocentric beings to outwardly focused adults. "Have Less, Do More" is one family's mantra. "We want our kids to want," explained one mother, going on to explain how from age 8 children in her family get to choose which charitable organization they want to donate their birthday money to. Boyack suggests picking organizations as a family -- a local, national and international choice, as one mom detailed the other day -- for which kids can hold bake sales or lemonade sales throughout the year. Even though, as members of the Church, we already give 10% of our incomes to tithing, that is, as one mom has stated to me, "only the baseline" for what we should be prepared to give. It's important that children learn the positive power of money, but as they get older they can learn the power of physical contributions too. At the meeting, mothers spoke of traveling to India or Africa with their teenagers and confirmed service missions' ability to combat the self-centeredness of the teen years.

Next week, my plan for Family Home Evening is to introduce Kiva, the premiere microlending organization, to my girls, where $1 here and there will add up over the year to make a difference in someone's life. As my girls start to make their own money with rewards for practicing an instrument, hosting a lemonade stand (a favorite Brooklyn activity), or helping me load the loose change into the Coinstar machine, I hope they feel empowered to change another's life as they themselves have less and do more.

Comments

[Ariel Laughton]

Great post, Neylan, and thanks for recommending this book. I'm definitely going to take a look at it. Even though Charlotte is still really young, we have already been thinking a lot about how to move as a family beyond the "we pay tithing and fast offerings so we are doing our part" mentality that it is easy to fall into. I agree that the best way to raise a child to feel good about herself is to teach her to lose herself in service to others.

[doria bybee]

Neylan, I also enjoyed reading your post. I think it's great you are introducing service with your children at such an early age!
Six years ago I was given a calling in church as a community outreach person, a new calling in our ward but it turned out to be the most rewarding one! One of my projects was feeding at the Salvation Army Homeless Shelter which had just opened that year. The calling is gone but I continue to prepare and serve meals with the help of members of our ward, friends, my husband and children. Even though it may get a little stressful getting things ready, as soon as we arrive at the shelter and they welcome us in, there is such a warm undeniable feeling we all have. Each year there are new faces and some of the same, they have their stories of why they are there. We start with a prayer and leave with an ovation, service doesn't get any better than that!