Learning to Teach Your Children Well : A mom who wanted to instill compassion in her kids now helps others do the same.
Deborah Spaide realized long ago that unless her five children were taught to be compassionate and caring, they would not grow up to be that way. So she devised ways to teach them the value of giving. And then she started a group, FamilyCares, which makes her ideas available to everyone.
The organization’s Web site (https://www.familycares.org) shows busy parents how they can put an “attitude of gratitude” into their children’s lives. The site shows in detail how to turn kids into caring, compassionate individuals who realize it is good to give as well as to get. And Spaide, 41, does it all with small projects that bring a feeling of fun and togetherness into the family’s life.
This is no small feat in an era when parents have little time or money even for the ordinary outings they’d like to enjoy with their kids. But that’s the charm of FamilyCares. Spaide’s idea is to incorporate giving and caring into everyday activities, making it a part of things you ordinarily do with your family anyway. Soon you’ll be shopping for school supplies with your kids, for example. Why not let your child select an extra pack of pencils--or a ruler, erasers, paper--for a child who lives in a homeless shelter and can’t afford such things?
The Web site, which began last month, offers hundreds of family project ideas for helping the homeless, the sick, the elderly and the incapacitated, all without breaking stride in busy schedules and without breaking the family bank.
It is broken into three sections: for children, for parents and for families. The children’s area, for example, offers dozens of well-organized ideas for helping others and explains in simple language why each idea can bring comfort and cheer to someone less fortunate. The writing is short and simple: “Little children with cancer and other serious illnesses often spend long periods of time in hospitals, away from home. Sometimes their moms and dads can’t even be with them. It can be very scary to be sick and away from your home and family. Nurses try to make the children comfortable. But they can’t be with the kids every minute. You can make a snuggly little pillow buddy that will stay with the sick child all the time.”
She Grew Up Seeing Charity and Compassion
Spaide says she grew up in a working-class community in Maine, where she helped out every day after school in her father’s hardware store. She saw people who could pay for what they bought and those who couldn’t even afford washers to fix their kitchen sinks. She witnessed kindness, charity and compassion on a regular basis, as people in the community helped each other.
In 1989, she and her husband, Jim, a business consultant, moved with their children to what she calls “a dream place--the beautiful, affluent community of New Canaan, Conn. I quickly became concerned about the material things I saw all the children had and how easily they seemed to acquire them. I was worried about the values my children were exposed to or, rather, the ones they would not be exposed to, because New Canaan is such a protected community. The kids were not going to see homeless people on the streets in New Canaan; they were not likely to see people whose needs they could help with.”
The Spaides decided the solution would be to get their kids involved in community service; they would team up as a family to help others in nearby neighborhoods. Their first project was to help a disabled woman who’d lived for more than 20 years in a tiny apartment that hadn’t been painted since she moved in.
“We went in as a team with some other people and painted. The kids had such a great time, were so thrilled to feel useful that they told all their friends what they’d done.”
The next project, scheduled through the town’s social services department, was to help an elderly woman who wanted to live at home, but couldn’t do the yard work or pay to have it done. “We told our two older girls they could each invite a friend. But 15 friends turned up at our door, all armed with rakes. They had canceled other plans because this seemed more important. It was so touching. . . .”
Spaide says the kid crew worked for hours on the overrun property and did “an amazingly good job. They ended the day saying, “What’s next?”
Informal Meetings
Led to Kids Care Clubs
Pretty soon, “we had 50 kids meeting once a month in our kitchen--sort of an informal club.” Spaide would find out what the needs were in nearby towns, and the kids would decide what projects to do next. “I asked them what they wanted to be called, and they said, ‘Kids Care Club.’ By then, I realized I was in over my head,” Spaide says.
The nearby middle school let the club start meeting there, and “sort of adopted our project.” Within a short time, all the public schools in New Canaan had Kids Care clubs as an after-school activity headed by adult volunteers.
Spaide compiled a list of projects the kids had done--about 100 by that time--and put them in a book: “Teaching Your Kids to Care” (Carol Publishing, 1996). “The entire family contributed” to the volume. And the entire family was invited to appear on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and the “Today” show when the book came out. “Churches and schools began calling, asking how to start clubs of their own.” Spaide incorporated as a charitable organization and began to help others start clubs around the country. Now there are 300 Kids Care clubs nationwide--including clubs in Los Angeles, Simi Valley and Yorba Linda--and a Web site, https://www.kidscare.org.
Each Kids Care club must be started by a school, church, synagogue or other sponsoring organization. “Then we started getting calls from families, wanting to start a little club with just their own children. So we came up with FamilyCares, a program that gives families an opportunity to volunteer together. This is exactly how our own family got started, and so we’ve come full circle.
“We give them resources and material on how to develop charity in their children, how to keep their kids safe while volunteering, plus ‘issues’ education, which helps parents explain to their children about homelessness and specific illnesses. . . .”
The children’s section of the site offers games, stories, ideas, explanations and a generally fun-filled attitude toward giving.
Spaide says there’s a lot for parents as well as children to learn about giving--things she learned and wants to pass on.
“I have never seen a child leave a homeless shelter pitying the children who live there. They see that these kids can be happy regardless of their circumstances, that they are not impacted by a lack of material things. They see that these children have found a ‘center’ inside themselves that our own children need to find too.”
It’s a place deep inside, she says, where children know to be grateful for what counts, the love of one’s parents and the security that comes from having a family to love.
Bettijane Levine can be reached by e-mail at bettijane.levine@latimes.com.