The Twelve Days of Giving!

The holiday season is upon us!  And no matter what your spiritual, religious or personal beliefs might be, this time of year presents an opportunity to teach our young children about the joys of giving.  As I explained in my previous post, generosity is a wonderful quality to encourage in our children.  And while the recipient of our child's generosity will benefit, the research shows that our child will benefit immeasurably as well.  It seems that the most generous among us are often the happiest!

Therefore, knowing that my children will be showered with a plethora of gifts from our families on Christmas morning, (and knowing how easily this can become the sole focus for young ones during the holiday season), I set out to create a tradition that would balance this experience with an understanding of the joys giving.

Now don't get me wrong, Dear Readers!  I have nothing against receiving!  I would be lying if I said that I wasn't looking forward to seeing my kiddos' little faces light up as they open their gifts!  Heck!  I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't looking forward to opening a gift or two myself!  But with the traditional focus on making a Christmas list, visiting with Santa to ask for a coveted toy, and the ripped-wrapping-paper frenzy of Christmas morning, this is my attempt to give my children some hands-on experience with the other side of the holiday craziness!

So I will now introduce you to the Twelve Days of Giving;  The positive psychology-informed exercise I created to teach my children about generosity and fostering the holiday spirit.  The idea is to give your child assignments that will help create a desire to "give back" during the holiday season.  This can be incorporated into whatever holiday you recognize within your family.  As we celebrate Christmas in my household, I have created this in conjunction with our Advent calendar.  Instead of receiving the traditional chocolates and cheap plastic toys, my children are waking up to holiday-themed missions that are geared toward experiencing the joys of Christmas.  While most of these missions incorporate some aspect of positive psychology, (mindfulness, savoring, relationship building, etc...), twelve of my children's holiday missions are focused specifically on giving.  

What You Need:

• List of 12 Missions Focused on Giving, (For suggestions, see below!)
• Method of Presenting the Missions to Your Child - We used popsicle sticks, a gold marker, and an Advent calendar with pockets.  You could use slips of paper and a grab bag, a sign taped to your child's bedroom door each morning, or any number of creative, fun ways to present this exercise!

Giving Missions:

Here is the list of preschool appropriate missions I created for my children:

1. Pick out a toy to donate to a child in need.
2. Make Christmas cookies to deliver to our friends.
3. Have a gift making day to create Christmas presents for our family and friends.
4. Bake doggie treats for Duncan.
5. Do something nice for someone.
6. Make and send a Christmas Card.
7. Bring food items to the food pantry.
8. Make an ornament to give to a friend. 
9. Bring Daddy breakfast in bed.
10. Call someone and sing a Christmas carol.
11. Help make a special dinner for Auntie.
12. Draw a picture to give to your sibling.

My goal was to provide structure, introduce our family's holiday traditions, and provide opportunities for my children to make choices about what and to whom they might want to give. Thus, the 12 Days of Giving incorporates recipients who are family, friends, animals, peers and strangers.  We will be giving gifts that we buy in stores, that we create ourselves, and that already belong to us.  Equally importantly, we will be giving of our time, effort, attention and energy. 

When my children have completed their missions and the Twelve Days of Giving have been counted down, I hope that they see the riches of Christmas morning as a wonderful reward for their efforts.  But more than this, my hope is that their experience of giving enhances the joy they feel this holiday season and sets the course for a generous and happy life for years to come!  So, Dear Reader, from my family to yours I wish you a very happy holiday season!  

From Thanks to Giving: An Addendum

Well, Dear Readers, here is the proof that our efforts were not in vain!  While it seems clear that some furry woodland creature must have preceded the visit from Mr. Blue Jay, (as evidenced by the knocked over drip tray and now formless bird seed goodies), we did successfully witness and capture photographic evidence of the fruits of our labor. Mission Accomplished!   :-)

Setting the Table for Gratitude!

Due to a comedy of errors, we ended up hosting Thanksgiving this year with only a few days notice.  After I had rushed around like a crazy woman trying to assemble all the fixings, I realized that we were still missing one crucial item:  Place mats.  Now before you think that we are completely uncivilized, we do in fact own a handful of place mats.  The issue at hand was volume.  And, due to a slight case of OCD on my own part, there was the minor snafu that what we do own do not even remotely match.

With one day of lead time, and my older son in tow, I decided to take my oversight as an opportunity to continue to teach my preschooler about the importance of gratitude.  This time, the focus was on expressing gratitude toward other people.

This topic, Dear Readers, is well traversed territory in the Positive Psychology circles. In a 2005 study conducted by Seligman, Steen, and Peterson, participants were instructed to identify a person who had been beneficial to their lives but had never been properly thanked. They were then given a week to write a letter expressing their gratitude for that person and were instructed to deliver the letter in person. During the delivery of the letter, the participants were told to talk with the person about what they had written. While the recipient of the letter undoubtedly appreciated the gesture, the results of the study showed that the people DELIVERING the letter received a month long increase in their levels of happiness as well!  It ends up gratitude gives a happiness boost to both the giver and receiver.

Now clearly my young children can not be expected to compose and read full letters documenting their appreciation of the people in their lives.  However, my take is that any time they are given the opportunity to think in a grateful way it sets the stage for them to continue this practice more automatically in the future.  So to kill two birds with one stone, I created the following table mat-producing, preschooler-appropriate gratitude exercise:

What you Need:

• Ironing Board - (AKA "The Skateboard" as Liam once pointed to ours and asked me why we had a skateboard in our closet.  It goes without saying that we are not big "ironers" in my household!)
• Iron
• Waxed Paper
• Yard Stick
• Construction Paper
• Scissors
• Markers
• Any thin, found items, (confetti, cut up paper, leaves, pine needles, flowers, and Liam's very favorite:  Dirt)

Instructions:

1.  The first step is to interview your child about what they appreciate about each person who will be joining you for dinner.  This is obviously the crucial, positive psychology part of this process.  There are no right or wrong answers and it's fun to hear what your child appreciates about others.  Write their responses on the construction paper and use the scissors to cut each of the answers out.  A selection of Liam's answers are as follows...

2.  Next, gather or create the items you would like to put as decorations in each place mat.  We went outside and found items to include and Liam also got some practice using his scissors to cut out pieces of paper.  

3.  Measure and cut two 24-inch pieces of wax paper for each place mat that you are creating.

4.  Heat up the iron on the warm or low setting.

5.  Putting one sheet of paper on the "skate board", place the gratitude message in the center and allow your child to arrange the decorative items where ever they would like, steering clear of the edges of the paper.

6.  Place the second piece of wax paper on top of the first so that the edges are even and use the iron to melt the wax between the two, paying particular attention to the edges.

7. Trim edges if necessary and you are done!

Liam and I decided to surprise everyone at Thanksgiving with our special creations, which doubled as place cards at our table.  Each person took home their place mat as a keepsake of our time together.  The end result was a tradition that was both amusing and heart warming for the participants, and educational for my child.  As an added bonus, his neurotic mother was happy because we had matching place mats to boot!

Why Happiness?

As the mother of two small children, I spend an awful lot of time thinking, (or maybe obsessing?), about how to be the best parent possible. Google has become my very best friend since I entered into the realm of motherhood.  I research, consult and Pinterest on an embarrassingly regular basis. Thankfully, as I'm sure many of you know, there is a wealth of information available about how we can best raise our children.  This is wonderful. The only problem is, it sometimes seems like everyone and their mother, (pun intended!), consider themselves to be an expert on parenting and are more than happy to tell you what you should be doing, (or are doing wrong), with your child. And often times all the experts have opposing opinions starting with how you should birth your child and continuing into your child's adulthood. 

As a psychotherapist, I am very much aware that quality of the information available across the internet varies widely! And science is my friend. I love me some good, solid research particularly when it comes to mental health and well-being. This background has led to me to embrace, and more recently become certified in Positive Psychology. My favorite definition of positive psychology comes from the Positive Psychology Center out of the University of Pennsylvania and is as follows: "Positive Psychology is the scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive." In much simpler terms, Positive Psychology is the study of what makes people happy.  (More on how happiness is defined later!) 

Most parents or parents-to-be have uttered the words, "I just want them to be happy." The beauty of positive psychology is that it actually draws a map for how to attain this goal! That's because research shows that a full 40% of our happiness is within our power to change. Think about that for a minute...Almost half of our happiness is fully within our own control! This is fabulous news for parents, as it means that we can focus our parenting in such a way that we maximize the probability that our children will learn the skills needed to lead happy lives. And we might just end up happier ourselves in the process!) Exploring ways that we can coach our young children to think and act in ways that promote life-long happiness, dear reader, is the purpose of this blog. 

But why focus on happiness?  Why not success? Or Health? Or even wealth? The answer is simple: research is showing that happiness is a key underpinning to all of these life domains. Happy people are in fact more successful than their unhappy counterparts. They earn more money and are less prone to many of the diseases that plague our society. And when people are really honest with themselves, pretty much everything they choose to do is with the aim of finding greater happiness… It seems that we are hardwired in our pursuit of happiness. 

So welcome to Positively Preschooler, where I will share my ideas and experiences with positive-psychology informed exercises, games, parenting techniques, and projects that are aimed to teach preschoolers the skills of happiness. I hope you will join me on my journey to parent, coach, and educate our little ones in the practices that will help them to create happy, fulfilling and joyful lives! 

With Sincere Gratitude, 

Christy