What Kids Can Learn from Volunteering

Are you looking for a great activity for the kids? How about one that lasts a lifetime, inspires kids to make good choices, instills confidence, and builds character?

Except for an investment of time on a parent’s part, the cost is low. But the return on investment is beyond measure. This incredible gift is the opportunity to volunteer. And the holiday season is the ideal time for kids to get started.

Studies show that kids who volunteer are happier, more productive, more successful in school, and more mentally well-adjusted than those who don’t. But while the kids may be willing, parents are the key. 

And the key to parents learning the value of kids volunteering is often found in the parents of children who grew up volunteering.

Here are five reasons for parents to encourage their kids to volunteer, along with advice from three moms (Andrea, Robyn, and Elna) who exemplified serving others for their now grown-up kids.

Volunteering teaches kids selflessness

Now, more than ever, raising selfless kids is a struggle for parents, and as kids grow older, the pressures they face academically, socially, and globally can be isolating. But one of the best ways for parents to help their kids develop selfless traits, say experts, is to make it possible for them to volunteer.

Andrea, whose two 20-something sons have volunteered at church and in the community since elementary school, says her kids acquired selflessness by serving others. 

“They learned it almost without realizing it,” she says. “Doing for others trained them to be selfless without them knowing they’d gained a valuable lesson. So when confronted with a situation that involves choosing to act selflessly instead of selfishly, they know the right thing to do.”

Robyn, mom to a 28-year-old physician, says, “Volunteering helps kids understand ‘It’s not about you.’ My husband and I used that phrase quite a bit in teaching our son selflessness. Part of life is learning to put others first, and the earlier you begin teaching that to kids, the sooner they’ll learn it, and the better they’ll retain it.”

Volunteering teaches kids compassion

The word compassion originated with the Latin word compati, which means “to suffer with.” So compassion, according to author Fredrick Buechner, is “feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you, too.”

Compassion encourages kids to be kind, patient, and accepting of themselves and others. It helps them build relationships with other kids, lowering the bullying risk. On a larger scale, compassion promotes the kind of social harmony so badly needed in our world today.

“Compassion teaches kids to be perceptive to the needs around them and to be responsive to those needs,” Andrea says. “That’s how we want them to be when they grow up. My kids aren’t perfect, but they’re generous, they’re helpful, they love people, and they care.

“In fact, I once asked my older son if he had gained anything from me dragging him around to different places to volunteer, and he says, ‘I’m probably a more compassionate person because of it.’ That was a proud mom moment for me.”

Volunteering teaches kids responsibility

Robyn recalled a conversation with her then college-age son. “He had gotten involved with a cause that needed somebody to keep things organized. True to form, he had jumped right in. As we talked, he listed several things he was doing to help. I became concerned that he was taking on too much and says so. He replied, ‘Somebody has to do it, Mom, and it might as well be me.’” 

She immediately shifted from a concerned mom to one bursting with pride. “He was following a lesson in taking responsibility that his dad and I had been teaching him all his life,” she says. “It made me feel like we had done something right as parents.”

But, Robyn says, making it possible for a kid to volunteer imposes a responsibility on the parent to help kids understand the “whys” of what they’re doing.  

“We would always talk about what we were doing while we were doing it,” she says. “For example, ‘We are taking this food to these people because they don’t have enough to eat.’ Exposing kids to volunteer work causes prompts feelings of responsibility for helping people less fortunate than they are.”

Volunteering teaches kids teamwork

Mother Teresa defined teamwork this way: “I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.”

And that’s how volunteerism – or any team effort, for that matter – ideally works: a group of diverse individuals combine their varying strengths and talents to create a successful outcome.

Elna, mom to two daughters, ages 28 and 33, sees volunteering as an avenue for kids to discover their own strengths while serving others. In the process, she says, they learn to use those strengths to become effective members of a team. At the same time, they learn how to serve.

“At the same time, they learn how to serve,” she says. “And I think it’s important to reinforce those lessons at home. For example, don’t just put dinner on the table. Ask the kids to grate the cheese, set the table or whatever. That way, they’re working as a team but serving each other, too.”

While Elna noted that each team member playing to one’s strengths forms a stronger team, Robyn took that thought a step further. “Knowing that they can feed on and feed into others’ strengths gives kids more confidence in what they can do, not just together but on their own,” she says.

Volunteering teaches kids independence

If nothing else, says Robyn, volunteering can give kids a dose of reality by teaching them that life isn’t always easy. But through those lessons, they begin to develop their own thoughts about the direction they want to go in life and how to get there.

“I deal with young people in my business, and I see many of them unable to face life’s challenges because their parents have always taken care of everything, seen to their every comfort, and catered to their every whim.”

That type of person, she says, has never been taught to contribute to society and are either unaware of problems outside of their own world or just aren’t capable of caring for others. When life is made too easy for kids, they become too dependent on others. Unable to develop the strength of character and skills for handling life’s inevitable challenges, like the death of a loved one, financial troubles, or broken relationships, they flounder.

On the other hand, says Robyn, “Kids who volunteer have seen people suffering through tough challenges like hunger or homelessness. Through those experiences, they gain an understanding of what life can bring and what it takes to push through. It’s empowering for kids to know that life isn’t always perfect or always comfortable but that it’s possible to survive. That’s where independence begins.”

June Mathews is a freelance writer living and working in Trussville, Alabama.