How Your Kids Can Help Someone Everyday

It’s impossible to pick an absolute favorite from our Inquiring Minds, Inspiring Finds video series, but the clip detailing Hadley Jensen’s uplifting goal is certainly up there. What’s particularly great about Hadley’s mission is that it’s pragmatic and can begin from the moment your child decides that it’s something that they too would love to do. And despite the practical nature, it can have an immeasurably positive impact on each and every one of its beneficiaries. Speaking of benefits, the act of helping someone also boasts proven mental and behavioral advantages for the person (your child) being of service to their community. Personal growth benefits for kids include the following:

Provides a sense of purpose.
Improves self-esteem.
Provides healthy dopamine production to reduce childhood feelings of anxiety and stress.
Improves social behavior.
Improves interpersonal communication skills.
Teaches leadership skills.
Improves overall mood and increases happiness.

As you can see, helping people is a win-win for all involved, so can you imagine how powerful it can be if done everyday? Share the above video about Hadley Jensen with your kids. If they express (or have already expressed) a willingness to take on a similar mission of their own, there are helpful tips that can make it a sustaible reality. Have a look below to find out what they are!

“Pick something small that will help you become who you want to be.”

5 Effective Ways Your Children Can Successfully Dedicate Themselves to Helping People Everyday

1. Make an Official Date-Specific Pledge

The mission to help someone everyday is amazing, but it can be ethereal and fade as the days pass unless someone makes it a personal contract. To begin with, set a specific time period to make the goal more tangible. One-year is a good base for pre-teens and teenagers. Younger adolescents can start this journey with a 3-month or 6-month pledge so that it doesn’t feel too overwhelming. Once the date-range is determined, hit your cupboard and/or local craft store to get a Sharpie or pencil crayons, a ruler, and 3, 6, or 12 big rectangles of construction paper. Each piece of construction paper will be used to create a day-calendar for each month. Just like in the movies, your child will cross-off each square to denote a completed task to help someone. While this can theoretically be done on their laptops or mobile devices, having that posterized calendar to look at every morning will maintain motivation. With that out of the way, we can now detail ways kids can help people in their community.

2. Look for Opportunities Among Friends and Classmates

One of the best parts about a pledge to help someone everyday, is the undeniable fact that it’s infectious. So when your child looks for opportunities to help someone from within their own social circle, they may spread the mission to peers in leading by example.

This can be very simple to do, which is important to maintaining everyday effort through the months. For instance, if one of their classmates stumbles on a field trip, your child can quickly step-in to lend a helping hand. If one of their classmates spills their juice in the class or cafeteria they can come to the rescue with a paper towel. If one of their classmates forgets a textbook at home, your child can be the one to sit with them and share. By initially making an effort to watch for an opportunity to do these small things, habitual behavior will be formed to the point that helping someone will become second nature. And as alluded to above, observational learning will kick-in as their friends and classmates follow suit. This may spill over into their peers’ households and other social circles, and pretty soon an entire community will be filled with interlocking helping hands.

Beyond random acts of kindness, the following are ways your child can commit to help a friend or classmate each day:

Tutor a peer in a subject that they (your child) has a knack for.
Help a peer practice for a sport/activity that they (your child) has a talent for.
Help a fellow student with a disability get to class on time or perform some other regular task at school that they find challenging.

3. Anonymous Counts

Helping people doesn’t have to come with recognition. While it feels good to be have someone say “thank you!”, the act of doing good is a reward in itself. Plus, doing an anonymously helpful thing for someone makes it easier to reach the daily goal. How? Let’s say that there is no clear opportunity to help someone who is experiencing a challenge on a given day. Is your child out of luck? Do they run this risk of disrupting the flow of their mission? Not at all. The following fit the “helping someone” category, even when done anonymously and/or the beneficiary is not clearly identified:

Leave a care package (while accompanied by parent/s) next to a sleeping homeless person or on the stoop of a household that you know is in need.
Drop-off clothes, toys, books (etc.) that your family no longer uses to a local donation bin/center.
Make a small donation to a humanitarian charity.

4. Includes Kind Words, Advice, or an Open Ear

The act of helping someone doesn’t require physical exertion or even in-person interaction. Your child can call a friend, classmate, or extended family member who they know is struggling with something. It can be to help with homework, or to alleviate an emotional burden with a conversation with someone who cares. Alternatively, it may be something super-practical like calling a grandparent to help them figure out how to share a photo on Instagram. Advice, words of encouragement, listening, or simply calling/texting to ask if someone needs anything can go a long way.

Depending on the age of your child and whether or not you allow them to use social media or social gaming apps, supportive words may also be delivered online. It doesn’t take much to make a big and positive difference. For instance, one of their online peers may post a photo of a drawing, painting, or other craft that they created. If this post doesn’t get a response from their followers (or worse, it gets criticism) they may feel bad. By leaving a heartfelt comment to compliment their work will make the young artisan feel amazing. Opportunities of this nature are found everywhere in your child’s digital world when they become accustomed to recognizing them.

5. Clock Ticking? Get Cooking!

There will be days when your child will realize that they didn’t get around to helping someone. Fret not, because the day is not over! While an extra household chore (beyond what is normally expected) can help them achieve their goal, we suggest that they hit the kitchen and get cooking instead. It can be in a sous-chef capacity or they can be charged with making an entire meal or snack for the family. Our Foundation loves this idea more than a typical household chore (vacuuming, cleaning the windows, etc.) because it teaches kids about nutrition and food preparation. More importantly, research shows that when kids get into the habit of baking and cooking they make healthier food choices and tend to eat more.

We hope everything above provides your child with inspiration to make an even more positive impact on their community, one person at a time. And we’re trying to do out part too! The Plant a Seed & See What Grows Foundation inspires and promotes healthy living and learning for kids across Canada. Help us help the next generation by pledging your support too! View more on how you can get involved.