SixSeeds.org: Parents Discussion: The practicalities of family service

The SixSeeds Parents Study group is comprised of a group of thoughtful Bay Area parents.  They convene regularly to read and reflect about raising children who enjoy material prosperity. 

The group consists of diverse backgrounds, parenting styles, and ages of children.   All of them play a primary role in day to day child rearing, as well pursuing some other part time vocation (noted below). 

Present at the discussion were:

• Jody Chang (board member of a family foundation) : 2 girls, Mei-Mei age 7, Ellie age 4.
• Jill Bekaert (expert in the spiritual development of children): 2 boys, Conor 6, Nathaniel 3.
• Mark and Gayll Phifer-Houseman (pastor and retreat director respectively): 2 boys Ephrem 22, Muhr 18, 2 girls, Yodit, 15, Beti, 13. 

Recently, the group met to discuss the practical dimensions of encouraging their children in giving and volunteer work.  Their conversation stemmed from reading Susan C. Price’s  The Giving Family: Raising our Children to Help Others.The conversation topics included:

• ideas for younger kids
• children’s temperaments
• how kids relate to money and economic differences
• the importance of physical location

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Jill:  I feel a need for practical ideas for younger kids.  I really liked the author’s idea of a scrap book for younger kids where they can use their hands and their eyes to create reminders of people they could serve and give to (see page 6). 

Jody:  We do have a scrapbook we call our “Prayer Binder” with pictures of micro-enterprises we’ve loaned to via Kiva. Our kids see the folks we “give” to and they sometimes choose them to pray for. 

Jill: Another practical thing is that our church small group is adopting a convalescent home in the neighborhood.  But sometimes it doesn’t feel that feasible because of the particular temperament of my child.  Conor is introverted and he doesn’t like going there because he doesn’t like to talk to adults he doesn’t know that well.

Jody: So what do you do then? 

Jill: I need to back up as a family and engage with what Conor is interested in giving to.  He has asked about homeless people he’s seen and he’s interested in overseas.  When he’s at the convalescent home he says, “I don’t know them! I don’t have anything to say to them.”

Gayll: It seems like we need a range of options to match our kids.  That’s why this is a good book to have on your shelf.

Jody: My kids love to pick fruit.  The gleaning example (in the book’s ideas section) really inspired me. 

Mark: There is a group in the Bay Area, called Village Harvest.  They organize individuals and families to provide food for the hungry, connect kids to  agricultural heritage and skills, and promote sustainable use of urban resources. 

Gayll:  Teenagers are a special challenge.  Our teenagers are not in a generous stage and the book spoke of this stage.  It is somewhat depressing to journey through adolescence. I find it disturbing how absolutely self focused children become in this culture.  It is an ocean our kids swim in.  I wonder, “Is it us? Are we not generous spirited enough?” 

Mark:  I’m confident that they will serve when they go away on service projects, where they give of themselves and love the kids, build the houses, etc.  We’ve also trained them to serve practically at home and when they are guests.  But they really resist giving anything away and being generous with money.  There is a disconnect in our family between practical service and the use of money. 

Jill: What can you do to make that connection?

Mark: We can do a better job of doing our giving with our kids present.  We could be writing the checks at family night and praying together for the causes and the people. 

Gayll: We have a unique situation as an adoptive family and with them having a refugee background.  Our kids have a wound that we are working with.  The pattern of working to make money and then buying something is a real new thing for one of our kids, and it’s especially powerful because it’s new. 

Jill: Conor is into using money as a play medium.  I encourage it because it feels developmental at his age.  But it is different in other cultures.  I asked my husband who grew up in Cameroon, “Did you play “store” when you grew up?”  He said, no.  The issue is kids imitate their parents and their culture.

Jody:  My kids’ problem is not giving so much as it is the practical aspects of serving.  The main way I try to pass on these values is by modeling, and sometimes involving them.  For example, at this year’s National Clean a Creek day, I took our kids and also invited Mei-Mei’s friend from school.  But it seemed like Mei-Mei’s heart wasn’t in it, she mainly played with the other kids and had a water fight.  I got frustrated with her when she threw away her work gloves.  Her friend’s cousin was really into the service and I wanted her to be into it too. What am I supposed to let go of and where am I supposed to push?  Should I follow up with a family discussion? 

Mark: I wonder if it might be better to have a friend invite her on service trips so it’s not connected to her relationship with you as a parent. You can email other parents and have them invite her onto service projects. So she can discover something with others. 

Jill:  There’s also the temperament issue again: some kids are really aware of how their bodies feel.  If the gloves were sweaty and it was hot, it might really turn her off. 

Jody: She is very sensitive physically and that may be a factor with lots of service projects.

Gayll:  It seems like a real challenge to figure out when to push and when to give room.  I liked that the book encouraged parents to “require” the kids to be in service (page 24.)  I am concerned about planning our girls’ summers: they are middle schoolers and are in between just being entertained and having a job.  I am thinking about having a requirement of having our girls have a 10 hours job or service project this summer.

There’s not much help from the schools.  The great irony is that this is more important than fractions or Gregor Mendel’s discoveries.  Every parent is a homeschooler in this arena and it’s tough to embrace this as an ongoing parenting challenge.

Jill: It’s important to me that I find ways to do this in a way that’s integrated with what our family is already doing.  I don’t want to compartmentalize this into a volunteer task that is tacked on. 

Mark: Is it part of your family’s practice to be involved with the poor in your neighborhood? 

Jill:  There is a lot of antagonism between the whites and the Mexican neighbors on our street.  The two white men on our street are so demeaning to the neighbors; some of the Mexican neighbors give us the cold shoulder because they are new and they maybe don’t have documents, so they are afraid of us.  At the park it’s great to meet the kids but there are lots of transitional families who come and go.  I try to build continuity, but often the people I have invested in have moved away.  Conor is aware of what Spanish sounds like.   Conor notices homeless people and is concerned about them.

Mark: Do you have a program to teach your kids Spanish? 

Jill:  The kids all speak English together.  My husband speaks Spanish and can relate to the parents.  So far, it’s okay that our kids don’t speak Spanish.  But economic issues are problematic because of the power dynamics.  The problem with the book is that it never addresses the power dynamics of being wealthy and just giving to the poor as “the other.”  I don’t know if the relationship across the social barriers needs to be a peer friendship, but the book doesn’t answer the issues of being so different from those we give to and serve. 

Gayll: As a Christian, I am not motivated to be a philanthropist or a volunteer per se. I am motivated to give my life away to others.  Jesus’ life-on-life of love of neighbors is what I am thinking about.  Volunteerism with strangers that I will never meet is not attractive for me compared to the life of service with our kids to those physically around us. 

Jody: We have lived downtown 5 years and it has taken a lot of effort to stick in with our Hispanic friends, whose son I tutor.  They have moved to three different houses, and each time I had to go looking for them.  It’s an example of how it is challenging to connect across socio-economic barriers.  In our small group, many have tried to connect cross-culturally, but even downtown, the people who gravitate towards us are mostly white and Asian. 

Jill:  The book does have a brief section on relationship with kids from other classes (page 52), but it’s not very extensive. 

Jody:  My mom is a model for me.  She’s a philanthropist but she’s also really involved in the lives of various poor teens.  She runs our family foundation so I have my mother’s model of investing the money to make the money to give away.  But she’s also very connected with these two inner city girls who she met through a Habitat for Humanity project.  She has given herself to these girls’ lives for years and years.  When I am with my friends who are very poor, I think “What would my mom do here?”

Gayll: You have to have some cross-cultural gifts to persist with it. 

Jody: I did grow up abroad, and I think that helps.  But even so, I’ve had to work very hard to live it out wholistically in a neighborhood with mixed-income residents.

Gayll: I am meeting with some suburban Sunnyvale moms who want to connect their families more with the poor.  They think that moving downtown will make it all happen.  I don’t think that it will be the answer for them.

Jill:  Behind one of those homes in Sunnyvale is a refugee home where I have dropped off food.  There is a lot of need in the suburbs that people can start with.  There are many ways to be involved in neighbors’ lives.

Gayll:  This is key because the whole Silicon Valley is mixed.  It is not ever going to get natural.  You have to be initiating with people.

Jody: You can move your body to a different neighborhood, but that alone isn’t going to change your life.