10 Ways To Teach Your Kids To Serve Others

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Teaching children to serve others is one of the most powerful lessons you can teach them. It will affect how they interact with others for the rest of their lives. Lessons on loving and serving others are some of the strongest memories many adults have of their childhood and their parents.

Kids have to see it in action and if you start them young they love getting involved. Even if it's a little more challenging when they're a little older, they will still remember the sense of accomplishment they feel afterwards more than their grousing at the beginning.

Here are 10 things you can do with them:

1) Take dinner to the home of a family who has had a new baby or has a family member in the hospital. Kids can help prepare food and color a special picture or card for the family. They are so proud when they get to deliver dinner with you.

2) Adopt an elderly neighbor. Get to know and visit them often. Drop off some cookies, ask them to tell your family a story about their life, watch for little things you could help with around the house or yard and check in on them after bad weather. You can also invite them to go to the park with you or to a family barbecue.This is especially great if your kids don't have living grandparents or grandparents who live nearby.

3) Collect needed materials for your school or a local community center and donate them. Earn money by doing odd jobs and ask friends and neighbors if they would be willing to contribute to the cause. Then go as a family to make the delivery.

4) Get to know a military family in your community who has a dad or mom on deployment. Offer to give the mother a break by helping watch the kids or attend to any odd jobs she might need. Taking care of a family while one parent is away is a challenge, especially when family members are worrying about the safety of their loved one every day.

5) Donate used goods to a local charity. Go through toys, clothing and other belongings and look for things you can donate. Take your kids with you to deliver the goods and take a few minutes for them to learn what happens to the items after the donation and who is helped with the funds.

6) Offer to collect a friend's or neighbor's mail, care for a pet, water their plants or cut lawns during summer vacations. This is old fashioned neighborliness and we need more of it in this world. People really appreciate this kind of help.

7) Take garbage bags to the park or beach and spend a few minutes cleaning up. We try to do this every time we go to our favorite beach. We have picked up a lot of trash and left the beach looking a little nicer. I still remember watching at a distance a friend at a busy LA beach walking through the crowd picking up trash. I was impressed!

8) Teach them to write thank you notes. Make it a regular habit in your family. Teaching children to be thankful, rather than just expect everything on a silver platter is an important part of growing up. As toddlers they take and take and take. As the get older, it's critical that they learn to see where things come from and appreciate their blessings. Make it a habit to have cards, envelopes and stamps easily available to the family.

9) Gather and donate books and magazines. There are many hospitals, rest homes and other care facilities that accept donations for reading material for their guests. Go through your own bookshelves then check with friends and neighbors and see if you can fill a box to donate.

10) Do a "secret angel" activity in your family. Put each person's name on a slip of paper folded up in a hat. Then have every person draw out a name. Every day for a week you each do a secret service for that member of your family. On the seventh day, have a family dinner & reveal who each family member's secret angel was. This teaches both service and a love for family. A great way to bond family members together and help them to be more thoughtful and aware of things around the house.

Bonus: You can also look for service opportunities through your work, church or synagogue. Many employers now incorporate a community service day into each year and most churches have many ways to serve and get involved.  If you don't know of any, ask your neighbors. Their church or workplace may need help with their projects.

Doing service side-by-side with your children will give them unforgettable memories and teach them a level of graciousness and thoughtfulness that will bless their lives again and again. How have you taught your kids to serve others? What projects have worked best in your family?