One of my favorite homemade desserts is a Hello Dolly Bar (aka Magic Bars, Seven Layer Bars). It’s a graham cracker crust layered with chocoalte chips, butterscotch chips, pecans, coconut and covered in sweetened condensed milk. I could eat an entire pan by myself. (I just made some for Asa’s teachers…so they’re on my mind.) Anyway, let’s pretend I made an entire pan for you. I cut them up in perfect squares and laid them on a beautiful plate. One of my special brown and turquoise plates I bought for myself just because they are cute.
Then I brought them to your house. I set them on your kitchen table and said, “ENJOY! I made these just for you. They are delicious and my very favorite snack.” You picked one up, ate it and were of course, blown away by it’s yumminess. I am happy you are happy and decide to leave. But before I jump in my car I say, “Oh, by the way, could you bring my plate back when you’re done?”
What would you say?
“NO WAY! Are you kidding me?! How rude can you get? BRING YOUR PLATE BACK? I’m disgusted. I can’t believe you!”
Or would you simply say, “Of course! Thanks again for the Hello Dolly Bars!”
I’m pretty sure it would be the latter. After all I made the dessert for YOU. I brought them to your house. The least you can do is return the plate to me. In fact, you’d probably be happy to bring it back to me.
This is an object lesson we used to use in our children’s church. Kids are very in tune with “fairness”. They realize it’s only fair to return the plate to me. But what about God? He gives us EVERYTHING. He made everything. He designed it with us in mind. He made the world for our pleasure and our good. So, when he asks us to give back to Him, we should be MORE than excited to do so.
I have grown into my generosity as an adult. I love to give back to God. But I’d love this to be something my children lean and understand at an early age. They don’t get much money (obviously) but they do have tons of STUFF. I so want them to see how blessed they are and choose to give instead of want more.
I’ve seen selfishness bubble up into Lydia’s words and actions. She sees a new toy and wants it. She can’t understand why we’re giving a princess gift to a friend on her birthday and she’s not getting one. She finds money and assumes its for her. I know she’s only 3. I know selfishness is par for the course at this age. I just don’t want the selfishness to grow with her.
I posted last week about the banks we made for Lydia’s money. One is for tithe (10% of her “income”), one for save (10%) and the 3rd jar is for the rest of her money–to spend. Of course, she was excited to put some money in the jar for God. She was “eh” about the save jar. But the clinking quarters in that spend jar had her giddy.
Then she got an American Girl catalog in the mail. She said, “I want one.” She assumed we’d be buying her one. Or two. And the dog. And cat. And a few outfits to match. We explained that this was what her SAVE jar was for. So, she immediately emptied her entire SPEND jar into the SAVE jar. She is determined that American Girl will be hers. It doesn’t help much that we have an American Girl store in town and get to walk through it every time we go to the mall. (Seriously, you’ll doubt the recession if you walk into that store on a Saturday afternoon. Those eight year olds and their mamas will mow you down in there!)
But even after we talked about her money, about giving to God and saving some for her American Girl, she still doesn’t get the God factor. She finds a quarter and says, “I’m putting this in my save box!” I’m not sure if I’m overthinking this or trying to hard. But I can just see how we flirt with a lifestyle of selfishness. We are so blessed. We have a nice house. She has doting grandparents. She has more toys than she needs. I can buy her clothes and books anytime I want.
So my first thought was to teach her about money becuase it’s hard to “tithe” your clothes or your toys that Grandma gives, you know? Plus, she recently got $5 and I didn’t want her to blow it at the Dollar Store. I wanted her to recognize God in all her gifts. I even thought about an allowance so she can begin to see how money works and where it goes.
So, if I didn’t ramble too much, it’s YOUR TURN. What do you think? How do you show God’s great provision? How do you help your kids understand our blessed-ness? How do you promote thankfulness? Willingness to give? How do you teach your kids to be good with money? With stuff?
We used to do the jars and now we moved to drawers. I got one little organizer thing with five drawers. I’m only really using four of them right now.
Drawer 1 – I used to put her “done” lists of chores in there – she had to complete the list to earn money – we’ve moved on to a different chore system so it’s empty right now, but there if I want it back. I’d put the lists in there and then pay her once a week or so.
Drawer 2 – Money to Sort – anything she earns or gets as a gift goes into this drawer.
Drawer 3 – Give
Drawer 4 – Save
Drawer 5 – Spend
Once every two weeks, or more often if needed, we pull all the money out of the sort drawer and sort it into the Give, Save, Spend. This means that ALL money she gets has to be divided. EVERYTHING is a gift from God – even the coins she finds in the seats in Daddy’s car – and must go in the sort drawer.
You’re nice that her save is for the American Girl doll. My girl has to save her spend money for such things, which is I guess what she’s doing by pouring the spend into save.
Anything in the Save drawer ends up in the bank (she helped me open an account last year) and is for her car or college.
I think by having the fourth drawer/jar, it makes her realize that everything she gets, she needs to give a little back.
Personally, I think what you’re doing is an awesome idea. I need to start doing the same thing with both of my girls. I got extremely lucky with my girls, they are both very giving. It’s always been easy for me to explain about buying certain things for gifts, ect. I, sadly, don’t tithe, because we don’t have a church at the moment, but that’s an excuse & I need to still set that money aside. I am trying hard to let my girls know that we should give every aspect of our lives to God, though.
You’ve given me something to think about & to teach my girls, though.
You’re way ahead of me on this. We talk a lot about sharing with others, but not a lot about giving back to God. Money doesn’t figure much in Elias’s life right now – but maybe it’s time we start!
My girls are 3 and 4 and just don’t feel they are ready to grasp many $$ concepts. If they receive a gift that is not a toy…it is usually a giftcard so that is a little different I guess. I do make them a part of packing up clothes they have outgrown to pass on to friends. They really enjoyed picking out items to buy for the Operation Christmas Child at our church this past year.
.-= Tricia´s last blog ..Feb. 9, 2009 =-.
I love the idea of 4 drawers to help kids realize that ALL of what they receive needs to be divided. We definitely want to teach LB about giving to God as it was not a lesson that we were taught as children. I was given coins during church to throw into the offering plate. It was never pre-planned or discussed.
Good things to think about!
.-= Heather @ Not a DIY Life´s last blog ..Vacation Bible School =-.