Start'em young

My husband was raised in a working-class environment, literally waiting at the door every Friday evening so his mother could take his father's paycheck and buy some bread.  Until I came to the US thirteen years ago, I lived in a third-world country where apples and McDonalds were a treat for us, and where we saw children begging at every corner.  Our children, however, are growing up in the affluent suburbs of Palo Alto, USA, and they have never really been exposed to the stark realities of poverty.  We are happy that we can provide a good lifestyle for our children, but we also want them to grow up to be caring human beings who want to help others.   And the area we live in makes it challenging to develop a genuine sense of empathy and compassion for the less fortunate.

The highway that separates Palo Alto from East Palo Alto is enough to shield my children from dilapidated storefronts and secondhand cars and people with shopping carts.  With every Halloween and Easter and Valentine's Day, with every party and gathering, they are showered with candies and small toys until none of it feels truly special. 

My six-year-old daughter recently made the observation that our house is smaller than any of her friends' houses.   There was no resentment, but she is starting to notice differences. Soon she is going to ask us

why their friends get to vacation in Disneyland or Hawaii every year, and we don't.  One day she will enter a high school where sophomores walk around with Gucci purses and seniors drive new BMW's, and feel underprivileged because she can't do the same.    Once they get a older and realize that our lifestyle is modest compared to most of our neighbors, it's going to be even more difficult to get them to realize how lucky we really are.

Challenging, yes, but not impossible.  Selfish creatures that children may be, I still believe it is never too early to begin teaching your children compassion for others.  We first read "The Little Match Girl" to our daughter when she was about 2 and a half years old.   When the story was over, she was literally in tears at the thought of the little match girl, cold and alone in the snow.  She could not understand why no-one was buying the little girl's matches or giving her food and toys.   

Since then, we have tried to get our young children to realize that not everyone lives the same way we do -- nothing too deep, just simple things that a kid can relate to, like other kids not having enough money to buy toys or ice cream or food.  We talk about how our house, even though it might seem small, is actually much bigger than many other people's homes, including their grandparents' homes.   Once we watched an Animal Planet show about how poachers are hunting tigers to extinction, and the kids naturally declared that poachers are bad men. We tried to point out the other side of the equation, how a poor farmer in Thailand might think that shooting a tiger is alright because he is only trying to get enough money to buy his children some food. 

We also try to get them involved in charitable giving.  Even though many organizations do not allow children to accompany adults to soup kitchens or food warehouses, there are other ways for them to help. For the past 2 Christmas seasons, I have taken my eldest daughter with me to help wrap presents for the Christmas Giving Tree.  Every year, each of my kids gets to shop for a new toy to give to Toys for Tots. And we try to emphasize that giving and sharing is not done solely during the holidays, but throughout the year.  We regularly go through the playroom and the kids help me set aside toys that they no longer use.  The toys are donated to homeless shelters.  We tell them that the toys are going to be loved by other children who have no toys, "like the Little Match Girl".

This year we began sponsoring a little Ethiopian girl's education through the Children of Ethiopia Education Fund. My kids love sending cards and photos and little presents to her, and are eagerly awaiting more photos and letters from her.  We hope to someday visit her in Ethiopia; my kids are already planning to buy Helina her first ice-cream cone.  It was easy to get them involved and excited because they can relate to her personally.  Helina is not a nameless, faceless poor kid to them; they know that she is six years old, just like my daughter, and likes playing with dolls just like she does.  They know that she wants to be a pilot, but her parents are not lucky enough to have the money to send her to school.   They see that Helina is actually a lot like them in many ways, and they want to help her out because if they were in Helina's situation, they would want someone to help them out too.  This has been a great way to plant the seeds of compassion in our kids, and we hope it continues to grow.