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The question that changed how I teach my kids generosity

by Lauren Street

A lot of generosity is invisible to kids. We give online, set up automatic donations, write checks, or help someone when our children aren’t around. They could be growing up in a generous home without ever seeing much of the generosity that happens there.

I remember experiencing an overwhelming realization as a new mom that I was responsible for teaching this little human everything – from how to get dressed to how to be a good person – and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. One thing that was especially important to me was teaching my daughter to see and help others.

The question that changed everything

When my daughter was just a toddler, I began Googling “volunteer opportunities for kids.” I wanted service to be a regular part of her life for as long as she could remember. But everything I found was for older kids. No one wanted a germ-ridden, sticky-fingered two-year-old in a food pantry.

So I reached out to an older parent with especially generous, service-minded adult children and asked if she knew of any volunteer opportunities for toddlers. Surely she hadn’t waited until her kids were preteens to get them in the rhythm of serving others. That’s when she asked me a question that forever shifted the way I thought about parenting:

“Do you regularly volunteer?”

I felt defensive at first. I admitted I wasn’t volunteering anywhere. I thought to myself, She’s forgotten how time-consuming this stage of life is. When am I supposed to find time to volunteer – especially when I can’t bring my kid with me?

“Your daughter is watching you,” the woman said to me. “She’s learning from what she sees you doing. And the best way to teach her to be generous is for her to see you being generous.”

That turned on a floodlight in my brain. I’d been reading my daughter books about self-control, watching cartoons about being kind, taking her to plays about resourcefulness, generally exhausting myself making sure she was receiving all the right messages about how to be a good human. But I was missing that one (seemingly obvious) piece of wisdom, and it changed everything.

That day, I signed up to be a weekly driver for Meals on Wheels – a program of our local senior center that delivers meals (and social connection) to older adults or people with disabilities who are homebound.

Generosity they can see

As it turns out, research supports the advice from that experienced mom. A 2023 study by researchers at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropyopens in a new tab found that kids are more likely to recognize generosity when they see their parents practicing it regularly. And kids whose parents gave frequently were much more likely to know their parents were givers than those whose parents gave only occasionally.

The researchers concluded that frequent modeling, along with intentional conversations about giving, can help ensure children actually see and understand their parents’ generosity. In other words, if we want our kids to learn generosity from us, we need to give them opportunities to see us living it out and then talk with them about what they’re seeing.

And children may start learning from what they see much earlier than we realize. In another study that followed toddlers from 12 to 24 months oldopens in a new tab, researchers watched parents model, encourage, and praise helping during everyday tasks. One of their strongest findings was that the more parents modeled helpful behavior when their children were 18 months old, the more those children helped a different adult three months later. Their findings support something parents have probably observed for generations: Even very young children are watching us.

Learning to serve from the backseat

When I first began my search for volunteer opportunities with my toddler, I was looking for something she could do. I’d imagined her bringing toys or snacks to kids her age, sitting back and watching her build friendships with kids growing up in very different circumstances. But when I redirected my focus to what my daughter was seeing me do, all the lessons I’d hoped to impress on her naturally flowed.

Every Thursday morning, I picked up boxes of food from the senior center and drove my route delivering meals – and company – to a handful of people in my community. There were seasons when I strapped my daughter in and out of her car seat at every stop. There were seasons when I drove my route alone while my daughter was in preschool. And there was a season when my daughter was in elementary school, but her baby brother rode along with me.

As we drove, we talked about who we were visiting and why they needed help. We talked about why bringing someone a meal mattered, but also why stopping to visit mattered. When they asked questions about why someone lived alone, used a wheelchair, or couldn’t leave home easily, those became opportunities to talk about noticing people, caring for them, and using what we have to help.

Now those babies are 14 and 10, and I have gone back to work full time. But I still remember some of the special bonds we built those Thursday mornings. There was EJ in the assisted living complex who loved ladybugs; we still have the army of ladybug magnets she handed my kids one by one each time they came to visit her. There was Ruth who still lived in the small 100-year-old farmhouse her father and grandfather had built with their own hands. She was always our last stop because we would sit and visit for so long.

My kids are finally old enough to join family volunteer days and create generosity opportunities of their own. But the truth imparted to me so many years ago remains: The best way to teach my kids to be generous is to let them watch me being generous.  

If you want generosity to become part of your children’s lives, maybe the first question isn’t, “Where can I sign them up to serve?” Maybe it’s closer to the question that older mom asked me all those years ago: “When do they see your generosity?” Whatever generosity looks like in your life, find ways to let your kids see it. They may be watching and learning from you more than you realize.

Photo: Rachel Melton Photography