Making Your Kids Into Givers with Operation Christmas Child #OCCGiveBack

I’m a giver.

I mean, clearly. I come here everyday, sacrificing laundry and a clean house and countless other responsibilities ~~I hate to do anyway~~, to drop some knowledge on y’all ~~in the form mostly useless but wildly entertaining blog posts~~ about parenting and fashion and whatnot.

It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it!

My giving nature coupled with my desire to never, ever have to live with a bratty, spoiled mini-human, makes me work super hard to find good ways to help my children be better givers.

Sure, they still struggle to share even the smallest things amongst themselves, but they don’t have a problem sharing with their friends and/or classmates and they’ve even developed pretty big hearts when it comes to helping out needy children, animals, and causes.

We help the Dudes pick a cause to save for at the beginning of every year (this year they all picked something to do with animals), and we always donate our used clothing and toys to organizations towards the end of the year.

But, I always feel like we can do more. Because we are blessed to have so much.

So this year we did. Tanks to the homies at The BlogFrog, we discovered Operation Christmas Child, an organization that provides boxes of awesome to needy children in countries outside of the US.

I wanted The Dudes to know that giving feels good to the person who receives, but it also feels pretty fantastic to the person doing the giving too.

So, naturally, we had a Box Packing party!

Got a few friends over and packed their boxes too!

This was such an easy project for us to accomplish, but it really can help in a major way.

Here are some other ideas about how you can get your kids in a giving mood this holiday season (and the rest of their lives).

5 Easy Ways to Make Givers Outta Your Kids

1. Have a purge. Clean out your own house and donate unused-but-still-in-good-condition items to a local charity. We started this by telling The Dudes that Santa can’t bring new if you don’t get rid of the old. That got them in the mood pretty quickly.

2. Just give time. Sometimes you aren’t in a position to make a financial donation. Having lived on a fixed income before and suffered unemployment, I get that. Totally. But you can still give of your time. Go to a food bank or soup kitchen for a day. Or take the kids and help out at a nursing home. Even spending an afternoon picking up trash around your neighborhood is a good deed that needs doing!

3. Work on their manners. Being gracious is part of being a giver, right?! So help your kids understand that everything, including their next breath, is a gift they should be appreciative of. It’s hard for kids to grasp that they aren’t specifically entitled to things, but it’s not hard to remind them of it by requiring them to say please and thank you, requiring them to share (even when they don’t want to!), and allowing them to experience a little hard work in order to earn things. One day, it will click!

4. Travel. You may not be able to go to a third world country this summer and work to build houses or clean water or anything like that, but, you can get out of your own hood a bit and see how other families, right here in the US, live. I remember taking The Dudes to a less affluent neighborhood in a city near home and them being surprised by the living conditions of people just a few towns over. They thought poor people only lived in Africa where I threaten to send all of their uneaten food. So. Not. True.

5. Have fun with it. Giving doesn’t have to hurt. As a matter of fact, it shouldn’t. At least not at first. We like to make giving into a party (like everything else in our lives) so that we can not only enjoy it while we do it, but get all of our friends involved too!

Need more tips?! Check out thepBd Facebook page where some giving type readers shared their ideas too!

This holiday season build a box with your family to teach kindness, compassion, and generosity.

Operation Christmas Child and influencer marketing platform BlogFrog have teamed up with 200 bloggers like me to spread the word about this great cause.

BlogFrog will match the first 200 boxes that are built. Pledge your commitment below to build a box today on Facebook or Twitter!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Operation Christmas Child. The opinions and text are all mine.

This holiday season build a box with your family to teach kindness, compassion, and generosity.

Operation Christmas Child and influencer marketing platform BlogFrog have teamed up with 200 bloggers like me to spread the word about this great cause.

BlogFrog will match the first 200 boxes that are built. Pledge your commitment below to build a box today on Facebook or Twitter!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Operation Christmas Child. The opinions and text are all mine.

Making Your Kids Into Givers with Operation Christmas Child #OCCGiveBack

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