Service Projects: Helping Children Define How They Can Make a Difference

The New York State PTA Reflections contest deadline was less than two days away. My daughter, Laura, has participated in the contest each year, and so I wasn't surprised when she approached me for help one late friday night, the weekend before her submission was due.

I was exhausted.

As a full time working mother, nothing perplexes me more than the time and energy it takes to help my children organize themselves. Laura's late-night request was proof positive that I was failing miserabley in this endeavor.

"Can't we skip it this year?" I begged her. And she stared at me, dumbfounded. Blinking.

This was not my best parenting moment, I'll admit that.

"Fine," I sighed, tossing my elaborate plan of watching a movie from under the warmth of my favorite quilt right out the window. "What is the theme for this year?"

Laura smiled and handed me the contest flier, which defined the prompt that she was to respond to: I Can Make a Difference By....

"Okay," I sighed. "What can you write about?"

She shrugged.

This wasn't going well.

Over the next half an hour, Laura batted around all sorts of ideas, involving my permitting her to go door to door to raise funds for all sorts of things. But my overprotective maternal instincts were not willing to allow her to go down that path.

"We could pick up litter," she suggested. Her father and I tried our best not to wither before her eager eyes.

I tried a different approach.

"Let's brainstorm," I suggested, pulling an essential strategy out of my teaching toolbox. Laura was given two minutes to simply spit out all of the ideas for making a difference that she came to mind. She wasn't allowed to judge her ideas or scrap them.

"Just get them down on paper," I told her. And she did that. In the end, a handful of things lept out at her as real possibilities: recycling bottles and donating the money to a charity, donating gently used books to a local hospital book drive, and buying new hats and gloves for our local homeless shelter.

These were all perfectly do-able.

"But I have to write about how this makes a difference," Laura reminded me. "And I don't think that I can really make a big difference. I want to make a big difference."

We realized that this would require involvement beyond the walls of our home. I looked at our overbooked calendar and offered her a grim smile.

"That's a great idea, Laura," I said, "but we don't have a whole lot of time."

She knew this, and she settled on her plan to collect books and bottles and hats and gloves. It was time for bed, and she went willingly, but I knew she wasn't satisfied with the ideas she settled on."

Several days later, she voiced her unhappiness again. And it really bothered me that she felt trapped by her age and her limited resources. The only thing she seemed to be learning was that kids couldn't do what she really wanted to do....she really wanted to make a bigger impact.

"You know, Laura," I mentioned, "when grown ups decide to work toward change or help a cause, they usually focus on one that is personally meaningful to them."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

So I explained further. I told her how life presents everyone with challenges, and some of them are greater than others. Some of them change us for life in ways both big and small.

"If you want to commit yourself to making a difference, why don't you think about the things you've overcome in your short life?" I asked her.

And suddenly, Laura had a path to follow. She would devote herself to doing small, kid-sized things every day. But she would do this in memory of her grandfather, who believed in the power that one small person could have.

And there was more. She would write about it, yes, just as her contest encouraged her to. But she would do this online.

"I want to do a blog about it," she said. And I shrugged, not thinking much about it. Laura loves to use the computer. Blogging was a new hobby. Whatever makes her happy I remember thinking.

And it was the best decision that she made.

Helping my daughter define how she could make a real difference boiled down to these essential steps:

• Allowing Laura to brainstorm, without judgment, everything that she thought she could possibly do to make a difference.


• Making sure that it was Laura who chose the activities that she would take on to raise funds, spread awareness, or offer support.


• Modeling for Laura how adults go about the process of defining which causes they want to serve. The why usually comes from personal experience.
  
• Encouraging Laura to use her personal gifts, talents, and the hobbies she loved best to support her chosen causes.

There are so many things that children can do to serve others, their communities, and even the world at large. Helping them to find their way doesn't have to be an overwhelming task. Knowing who your child is and how they like to spend their time provides important information that parents can use to encourage them in their efforts to make a real difference.