Project: KidGive

"This feels like I won the championship," Thing 1 told me today as he held the Salvation Army tag he'd pulled from the Christmas tree at the mall. Thing 2 kept showing people in California Pizza Kitchen her tag, telling everyone around her, "There is a 9-year-old girl who isn't going to have Christmas presents and I'm going to get her a real art set!"



Project KidGive is an idea LaGringa and I have been thinking about for awhile. The plan was, like so many other families, to pick a child's name off the Christmas tree at the mall and have the kids earn money themselves to make enough to buy the toy for a child this Christmas.

Project KidGive became the focal point of the kids' days, doing chores, talking/fantasizing/questioning about the child they were so determined to help.

In the end, it took six weeks of cleaning out mommy's car, taking out the trash, folding laundry, being the "light police" by turning off the lights in the house, offering to help neighbors and grandparents.

When it was time, we went and picked out the toys. It took for.ev.er. They looked and sampled and price scanned dozens of toys, looking for the most special, coolest, most fun one they could find. At last, they were satisfied and we took the gifts to the mall.

The holiday crazed mall concierge caught on fast when I started coming toward her with two beaming kids, arms laden with presents, handmade notes and drawings that were to go with the gifts. I took photos and cried with pride. Mission accomplished:: The Things worked from their hearts for a stranger in need and for more than a brief moment, got to live the true spirit of Christmas.



How We Did It:

1. We told the kids about the project with great anticipation before we went to the mall to get the Salvation Army tags. That way, they knew what was going on and we didn't spring it on them. I didn't multi-task, I went to the mall for that reason only and I read them every single tag, allowing them to pick them for themselves.

2. We made everything very visual. We posted a progress chart that they could fill in daily. There was an unexpected bonus with this, since we were able to count how much we made for the day and how much was remaining. Good math skills!



3. La Gringa and I praised constantly for their work. We showed visitors their chart. We touted them as givers, we told them they were like Jesus (and they always added: and like Santa!). We didn't confuse household responsibilities with these special chores.

4. We made the goals attainable. This took some work, as I had made the dollar values too low at first (10 cents per chore, on average was way too low). As time went on, we had to get more creative ($3 for reading a book). We made sure there was always room for a chore (30 seconds to run around the house and shut of lights to 15 minutes of putting away laundry).

5. We let them have control over picking their gifts. Gave them the money they'd earned and took the time to drive them to (three!) stores they wanted to investigate for their gifts.

6. We gave them one present on Christmas Eve: it was the same gifts they had earned for the other children. We praised them and talked about their giving, the feeling of giving and reinforced how they had made someone else's Christmas a good one.

Next Door Solutions

I had a terrible experience years ago that reminds me of how vulnerable and precious the lives of mothers and their children are, and, every day reminded even more of how strong mothers and their children are.

The Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence is having a holiday boutique where children and mothers pick from donated gifts to give to each other for Christmas. You can get the full list of items on their wishlist is here:

Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence

Thanks.

Slow as Molassas...Kiss My Ass Internet

Somewhere in the days after Thanksgiving comes the surge of panic. Everyone is shopping, late for deadlines, running out of time, stressed out beyond the capability of Lexapro and, broke. If there is such urgency, then why does everyone and everything move so damn slow in December?

Everything, everything seems to slow down like lingering effects of that dang triptophan. The F-in Internet is slow as hell. Try to order Christmas cards from Shutterfly...it'll fuck you silly. There is no fricking way that Shutterfly is so stupid that they can't figure out to perhaps S.C.A.L.E. during busy seasons? How about Nordstrom.com which in some freaky way is integrated with Amazon.com and if you've got orders in one place, it completely jacks you in the other. Like I am only going to shop in one place for all of Christmas? Um, yeah.

How about parking? How about browsing shops? How about getting your friends to respond to personal emails? How about your ever-present consultants fully available in January, but exercising their damn right to not be employees and f-ing disappear the Wednesday before Thanksgiving? Everything gets so slow that it's nearly impossible to do anything but join in the mix of droning slowness.

I run on an RPM that would burn the vinyl off my Neil Diamond collection. I'm not saying that this is a good thing, but 'nuff said that can't wait until January.