In my efforts to bring my son up as an “Earth Warrior” I have also made it my mission to teach my 4 year old the act of charity. I believe that who we are and become starts at a young age. I see so much taking and feeling of entitlement today that it makes me truly sad. I don’t want my son to be part of this cycle. I want to teach him the importance of giving and not expecting anything in return. I also want it within him to help others in need and to be selfless. As those of you who are parents know that this can pose as a challenge to someone so young.

I have known I’ve wanted to do this since Austin was born, and I wanted to start when he was old enough to understand what we were doing and why. Last week I started talking to him about how we were going to go and pick out a couple of toys for children that weren’t as lucky as he was and may not have anything under their tree this year. Of course this was a new concept for him and he couldn’t really understand how this could be possible. So every day we talked about it and I tried to explain to him the best I could.  I would point to various toys he owned and give him examples that there were many children that weren’t as lucky as he was and didn’t have this or that. (I did something similar this summer when we were giving his gently used toys to charity) Since he understands that you need to work to make money, I explained that some parents don’t have jobs or if they do they make very little money and that they need to use it to put food on the table instead. I will admit that the night before when I reminded him that we were going to Toys R Us in the morning to shop for under privileged children and that we weren’t buying him anything, he was a bit upset. In the morning I explained it again and we set out for our shopping trip. He looked at toys for himself, but never asked if he could have one. We went for the toys that were on sale so that we could get 3 instead of 1 for the same price. He was actually really happy to help pick them out. We got 3 furry frenzy pets a puppy, a kitten and a bunny. Once he got into the swing of things he wanted to buy many more things for charity. He really made me proud!

Now this second part of the story is a bit bittersweet. The following day we went to our local McDonalds to put our donations in the Toys for Tots bin. Sadly after the bin being there for almost two weeks, we were the first people to donate anything.  He was very proud of himself and told me that it felt really good to give! Proud mommy moment! As we sat down to eat I noticed a little girl walking around with one of the furry friends we bought. As you can imagine alarms bells went off in my head! I called over a lady who worked there and told her that the toy the little girl had was the one I just had donated. She went over talked to her and put it back in the bin. About 20 minutes later we were ready to leave. I went to recycle our recyclables and Austin ran over to the bin and exclaimed that one of the toys were missing! I went over and looked and sure enough there were 2 instead of 3 furry friends.  You can imagine how upset the both of us were. I asked for the manger, who came over quickly, when I explained what happened she did a walk through around the store and found nothing. Then she offered to look at the security cameras, I thanked the universe and as I waited I asked the powers that be to please let the individual still be in the restaurant.  When she came back walking with purpose I knew she saw who it was. She came and told me it was the mother of the little girl who took it the first time! She approached her in the playroom and got the toy back! Bravo! I was so happy I was almost in tears! I thanked her and we showed Austin that we had all three toys and he was thrilled. She put them in the backroom and told me that when new donations came she would do the same with them. Austin did ask what happened, since I didn’t want to jade and ruin his first real selfless act,  I just told him it was a misunderstanding.  The woman told the manger that she didn’t know that it was a charity bin. I’ll let you be the judge as to whether YOU believe her or not.  In my efforts to teach my son the acts of charity, she was teaching her daughter the acts of stealing. At least this story had a happy ending.

I included this bittersweet part because I am hopeful that if someone is in a similar situation that they will not give up and not let the person get away with it. (As long as it doesn’t put you in danger) and to show you that there are still Christmas miracles, that people can’t get away with bad actions and most importantly to not let something like this prevent you from giving and teaching your children to do the same thing. Also, because I believe that good deeds need to be recognized, I called McDonald's head office and commendated the manager, because it would have been all too easy for her to say "I'm sorry, there isn't anything else I can do", she didn't, she went above and beyond. For that she definately needs to be recognized to let her know her actions were appreciated and to encourage her to do it again in the future. I hope that you take the time not only during the Christmas holiday, but all year to commendate someone for a job well done! Because in the end good always wins.