{"id":2303,"date":"2016-02-26T00:01:19","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T00:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.mops.org\/?p=2303"},"modified":"2016-02-26T00:01:19","modified_gmt":"2016-02-26T00:01:19","slug":"teaching-my-children-generosity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/teaching-my-children-generosity\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching My Children Generosity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou have to share<\/a>!\u201d \u201cTake turns!\u201d \u201cGive it to her already!\u201d \u201cI\u2019m sorry, but you just can\u2019t have it your way. All. Of. The. Time!\u201d<\/p>\n

My attempts to guide my children toward kind, generous behavior go from patient to livid<\/a> in about as long as it takes a toddler to find an escape route in a parking lot. In a word, fast.<\/p>\n

Despite my efforts to demand bigheartedness, these little people with minds and wills of their own, manage to quickly prove how hypocritical I can be. As I\u2019m standing in the middle of the kitchen yelling, \u201cCan\u2019t everyone just be nice around here?!\u201d I can see the smirks on my children\u2019s faces. They have managed to push all of my buttons. In a way they are stage managing performance art. They like to call it, \u201cOur mother as irony.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so with generosity, I\u2019m reminded yet again that the best way to teach my children a desired behavior is to stop the lecturing and model it. I am their prototype to what it means to be an adult in the world. I set the standard for what is acceptable. When I look at it that way I am forced to do a little self-evaluating. How am I living generously?<\/p>\n

In many ways a generous life is a subtle one, because generosity and humility go hand in hand. I don\u2019t want to bring attention to my behavior by making every kind offering to the world a teachable moment for my 4-year-old. That would be manipulating the true reason for the offering. No, I must trust that my child can glean from what she sees. And as my kids grow and mature they will realize that what I expect of them, matches my own conduct.<\/p>\n

To live a generous life, with my time, talents and treasure, in front of my children it might look like babysitting for a friend who needs a break, saying \u201cthank you\u201d as often as I can to as many people as I can, buying groceries for a neighbor, or gas for the car parked next to me. It might be lending out my things, or stepping in when I can help. It is a quick-to-offer attitude and a belief that what I have been gifted, in both the tangible and intangible, is meant to be shared.<\/p>\n

Just as with all things parenting it\u2019s the repetition that speaks. The everyday every day, moment upon moment, that snowballs into a generous life. Because I don\u2019t want to scream at my kids to be nice to people. I want to give them someone to look up to that is worth imitating.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Alexandra Kuykendall<\/strong>
\nAs a mom to four girls, ages 3 to 12, Alexandra Kuykendall\u2019s days are spent washing
\ndishes, driving to and from different schools and trying to find a better solution to the laundry dilemma. She writes to capture the places where motherhood meets everyday life to remember the small, yet significant moments in the midst of the blur. She is the author of\u00a0The Artist\u2019s Daughter, A Memoir<\/em><\/a>, a contributor to Be you, Bravely, An Experiment in Courage and acts as the Specialty Content Editor for MOPS International. A city girl at heart, she makes her home in the shadow of downtown Denver. You can read more of Alex\u2019s everyday thoughts and connect with her at\u00a0AlexandraKuykendall.com<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou have to share!\u201d \u201cTake turns!\u201d \u201cGive it to her already!\u201d \u201cI\u2019m sorry, but you just can\u2019t have it your way. All. Of. The. Time!\u201d My attempts to guide my children toward kind, generous behavior go from patient to livid in about as long as it takes a toddler to find an escape route in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":2306,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,102],"tags":[104,127,290,291,55,56,101,292,114],"class_list":["post-2303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","category-relationships","tag-advice","tag-alexandra","tag-generosity","tag-humility","tag-mom","tag-motherhood","tag-parenting","tag-self-awareness","tag-wisdom"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}