Volunteer with your kids!!

For me, personally, volunteer work has been the most significant and life-changing experiences in my life. Being deployed with the Red Cross to the Southern United States for Hurricane Katrina and working at the Senior Center in Sunnyvale, CA were among the most recent and significant for me. When I gave birth to my daughter, I couldn’t wait to experience these same life-changing moments with her. I couldn’t wait to teach her what it was like to be selfless, compassionate and humble. Soon after did I realize that you cannot expect or hope for a child under the age of 4 years-old to be a selfless human being, as their considerably self-absorbed in their own growth and discovery. However now that she is 4, I can see many different options where I can share these giving moments with her. In one instance we were at the grocery store and a young girl was handing out pamphlets with a list of grocery items they were looking for to donate to a local shelter. We went to the canned soup aisle and I had my daughter choose 4 different soup options that she wanted to give to “families that didn’t have enough money to buy food”. She chose 4 soups with meat in it (even though I’m a vegetarian and it’s against my cause), however I said not a word and supported her choices in donation. She was so proud to hand the cans of soup to the young girl taking the donations. “These are for the families that don’t have money to buy food” she said as she handed over the cans. Other forms of donation or volunteer work is; bake sales, walks for charity (a lot of times, these can be for kids of young ages to be involved in, you can bring strollers on long walks, as I’ve done previously for our own Instructor’s walks for Brain Tumor awareness.