In your child’s life, there are going to be a lot of time where he or she will have the opportunity to give a gift to someone. Whether this is to their friend at a birthday party, to their siblings at Christmas, or a thank you gift to a pastor or coach, you’re going to want your child to learn how to give meaningful gifts. However, most children are much more concerned with receiving gifts than giving them. So to help your child learn the happiness and joy that can come from bringing happiness and joy to others, here are three tips for making your kids good gift givers.
Teach The Rule Of Three
To give someone a good gift requires a certain amount of knowledge and effort. To tap into both of these concepts, Beth Kobliner, a contributor to the Huffington Post, recommends that you teach your children the Rule of Three. In this rule, your child should try to think of three unique things about the person they’ll be giving the gift to. Once they’ve brainstormed these unique things, your child can then use this information to try to come up with a good gift idea based on one of these three ideas. This will help move your child from giving generic, meaningless gifts to gifts that are personal and poignant. Nowadays there are loads of gifts that can be personalized online, which makes things a lot easier. Personalized BobbleHeads, for example, could be a great gift for them to give to their friends at birthday parties.
Have Them Use Some Of Their Own Money
Although most children don’t necessarily have a way to be making money on a regular basis, it’s important that your child learns that the funds for giving gifts don’t just materialize out of nowhere. Because of this, Chris Taylor, a contributor to Time Money, suggests that you have your child use some of their own money to purchase gifts for their friends or loved ones. This small sacrifice will help your child make a more thought out decision about how they really want to spend their money on this gift. While you might have to supply your child with the way to earn this money, having them work for it can make the message of gift giving more impactful.
Encourage Them To Get Crafty
Not all good gifts have to come from a store. In fact, Abigail Wise, a contributor to Real Simple, shares that some of the best gifts and gift givers take advantage of home-made goods for their gifts. To show your kids that this is a possibility when giving gifts, you may want to consider encouraging them to get crafty or make something with their own hands as a gift idea. This might prove to be much more meaningful to the person they’re giving the gift to as well.
If you want your children to enjoy giving gifts more than getting them, consider using the tips mentioned above to teach your kids how to be good gift givers.
