People just can’t help being happy when giving something to someone else. Christmas is supposed to be about giving, but we all know there can be a lot of emotional baggage that comes with giving within families or the office.

At least once in the season we try to show our kids how to step out of that and illustrate giving on a more fundamental level.

We’ve traditionally had a very limited budget, but there is always someone who has less. We, after all, have our hierarchy of needs met: we have shelter, food, clothes and love. We are, and have always been, more blessed than others who don’t have even that. Somehow knowing this creates a feeling of gratefulness, which also induces happiness.

Today the kids and I are going with my mentoring group – a group of at-risk adolescent girls and their adult mentors – to a child development center. The mentees have much less than we do, but again, there is always someone who has less. We want to show the mentess how to benefit from the happiness-creating act of giving as well.

We’ll give hand-made Christmas cards and sing Christmas Carols and finish off with lunch.  

If you really want to give something special this year: give time. It’s in short supply these days, so everyone values it.

Sign up to be a mentor. Find a local mentoring program at mentor.org.

This post was entered into The Generous December Group Writing Project over at Babylune. If you want to get into the Christmas/Holiday spirit you can hope over and read some tear-jerking posts.

Post from: Blisstree

Giving Time

But, it’s a big goal so I have to choose smaller, more tangible things with more instant gratification - little wins – to keep me motivated. Mentoring is one of those things. Something achievable.

By investing one hour a week in a my assigned kid I can influence her world. That makes me feel powerful and effective.

For example, last year my protege was in four resource classes. This year, she passed her standardized tests and is now in only one resource class. That’s big tangible progress. Last year she said she loved to sing, and sing she can, but she didn’t want to take choir. This year she signed up for choir, cooking and dance.

I took Ambrea, Ainsley and Zack out for expensive deserts at a fancy restaurant to celebrate the start of the new school year. We talked about high academic expectations and I offered bribes for grades. Why not?

That’s success. That’s gratifying to me. That’s something tangible that I can take hold of which makes me feel effective. I have discovered that I like to feel effective. Action makes me feel empowered.

If you’re looking for a way to positively impact the world I highly recommend mentoring. Visit mentoring.org for a mentoring program in your area.

Post from: Blisstree

Mentoring Success

 As in Clearance: 50% off!

 This is wrong, Orman says, because if we don’t value what we do enough to charge full price then no one else will and that’s why we’re behind the game when it comes to money.

Clearance Prices

1. You accept the 3% cost of living raise your boss offers every January. Women could earn $1 million a year by telling their boss they won’t settle for this meager increase. This could be why men make $1 to our 75 cents.

2. You have a business and though the price of materials increase, say due to a war and increased gas prices, you still charge the same. You’re afraid your clients will leave you if you stay profitable.

3. You’re a stay-at-home mom and since you’re not working you don’t feel entitled to having money of your own. To avoid humiliation and tension you don’t ask and he doesn’t offer.

I would add that your money comes last on the list because the kids need this or that or you forgot to buy this or that with the grocery money, so your blow money gets spent for family purposes and never on yourself. Misguided selflessness. This is my personal experience.

4. You always barter services, even for stuff you don’t need. Say you’re a photographer and your friend is a hairdresser – she does your hair and you take pictures of her kids. If your regular fees are equal and you need your hair done – great.  If you charge $300 and she $75, this is a bad deal for you. Stop losing $225.

5. Volunteer work. Orman says we just don’t know where to draw the line with volunteering. She says men don’t volunteer to the extent we do and they get paid for much of the “charity” work we do for free. Men don’t seem to have a problem with getting paid for their good deeds, while women tend to think it doesn’t qualify as a good deed if they get paid for it.

I know of lots of men who have very profitable ministries, Dave Ramsey is a millionaire for his ministry of teaching people how to handle money. Many women don’t feel right about making money off a good deed. Due to this fact, many women are over-stressed and under-valued, suffering from a lack of time AND a lack of money because not only do we have a zero-profit ministry but we also have jobs and families to attend to.

I have issues with the volunteering myself. I feel terrible guilt about not teaching my daughter’s Sunday school class, even though I participate in other ministries. Also, I feel guilty when I don’t sign up for every dinner for a sick person, every sorting through crap for a garage sale, every teaching at vacation Bible school, etc. Yet, I’ve noticed my husband feels no guilt whatsoever at ignoring the call for help and passing the sign up sheet on.

I’ve also notice that the Church I attend has a gigantic budget and lots of people get paid for what they do. Not only men, but women too. So, it’s unclear to me why I feel such a terrible guilt when I pass the sign up sheet on. I do lots of volunteering and mentoring, but I hear every sermon or lecture about volunteering or giving to charity as a personal indictment. It’s one of the issues I’m working on.

Which of these issues are you working on? I’m dying to hear how other women feel like they might be on the clearance rack. Please comment. And check out So Sioux Me where I explore other financial issues and the lessons I teach my daughter through my relationship with money.

Post from: Blisstree

Are You On Sale?

It sounds shockingly low, especially since I am a work-from-home mom and I treasure 12 minutes away from kids in my face (I’m exaggerating, my children are wonderful people and I choose this life). But, if you’re a single-parent with a full-time job and the kids go to bed by 7:30 p.m. it’s not hard to imagine that kids might only score 12 minutes of face-to-face talking a day.

One of my pet-peeves is complaining with no action. Not that I never do it, but I don’t do it indefinitely. I constantly see people deciding to home school rather than be involved in the public schools, going to church but never leaving that safe haven, succeeding in careers and forgetting what it was like to struggle and all the while complaining about what the world is coming to.

 For myself, there is no question that everyone should be doing something to make the planet a better place to live for everyone. If the rich don’t take care of the poor, if the successful don’t show the unsuccessful their trade secrets, if the reformed doesn’t help the unreformed, if the educated doesn’t help the uneducated we’re all screwed.

Well, then the downtrodden in our world become too violent, angry, and resentful to be anything but dangerous.

I’m a mentor and I encourage anyone who has one hour of boredom or depression in their week to join me. Service is the cure for both. All these kids need is one hour a week of someone taking the time to encourage better grades and say words like ”college” and “career” and “choices” in phrases that apply to them to make a difference. 

Be the Change. Be a Mentor. Go to www.mentor.org and find a program in your town. It costs nothing. Mentors do not have to be perfect. Literally anyone can do it. Yes, You too.

Post from: Blisstree

Echo Oprah – Be A Mentor

This year, me and my mentee will be sitting at our group’s table alone. By some weird twist of fate and miscommunication we went shopping for her special outfit on Friday. I had thought all the mentors were taking their own girls individually and had arranged to do it on Friday night. But, none of the other mentors did. Due to our leader having a sick daughter going in for surgery, my mentee being out sick, and the other mentor’s job, one mentor ended up taking 3 teenagers to shop for their outfits after school yesterday.

The 3 girls were busted shoplifting.

By the grace of God, my girl and myself weren’t anywhere in the picture. Therefore we will be sitting at our table by ourselves.

The other girls are not being allowed to attend the banquet. Two of the girls’ parents were fine with letting them go tonight – can you believe it? Talk about a devastating lack of consequences. But, we are refusing to take them. There is no way we are rewarding them for shoplifting during a mentoring shopping excursion.

It’s shocking but not that surprising. These are at-risk teenagers. They aren’t the kids who are on the honor roll or have a ton of ambition or know the meaning of consequences.

I won’t share this with them, because I don’t want to encourage them.

But, once my poor mother was humiliated beyond reason when a police cruiser pulled up to the family reunion and hauled out my friend and I, both in handcuffs. We had been busted for shoplifting a lighter and had managed to ditch the stolen cigarettes during the bust.

I can’t seem to recall what my consequences were for that, but I know it was big. Like being grounded for the rest of the summer probably.

I sometimes have an overwhelming feeling that it was only through a miracle, the grace of God, that I didn’t end up dead or in prison, during my lengthy period of rebellion and risky behavior. I just pray these girls are blessed with the same grace, because if not, oh how I fear for them.

These girls need mentors, click here to find a program near you.

Post from: Blisstree

Consequences

I worry about girls getting STDs from experimenting with love and sex. I worry about girls becoming prey to fast talking older men who are really just sexual predators. I worry about eating disorders, low self esteem and poor body image.

I sometimes get a sick hopeless feeling in my stomach when I read things like Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty white paper on the self-image of girls growing up right now. I get emotionally upset when I read that 42% of 1^st – 3^rd grade girls want to be thinner and 81% of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat.

Don’t you just want to DO something about the collective conscience of girlness?  

Something simple anyone can do is signing up for a local mentoring program. The program I’m involved in pairs each woman with one girl. We all meet together for lunch once a week. That’s the whole commitment.

Our group tries to do something special like a slumber party, service project or dinner a few times a year. There is also a fancy banquet at the end of the year.  This year I’ve been a mentor to one 15-year-old girl and I’ll call her on the phone or take her to a $1 movie as well.

While they run a background check to ensure they are pairing kids with safe adults, there are absolutely no qualifications such as perfection or a post-graduate degree. In fact, the girls relate most to those who suffer from a lack of perfection.

You remember that guy who was getting stoned in some basement and said, Dude when I grow up I’m just gonna let my kids smoke weed. They’re gonna do it anyway. And all the other trashed people echoed, Yeah dude, right on! Okay, well unlike the rest of us, who realized that was an asinine idea, that guy had kids and didn’t change his mind.

His kids are the ones in a mentoring program. They are at-risk kids. At-risk for pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, dropping out of school, going to prison or jail, or becoming drug addicts. By at-risk, I mean, if something or someone doesn’t take an interest in the outcome of their lives they will end up becoming a serious and financially draining problem for society.

It’s not their fault. After spending a school year with my 4 girls I can understand that their anger is entirely justified. Their life is no Norman Rockwell painting. They are kids, they have no power to change their day-to-day existence.

I’ve also learned that I don’t have that power either. They are stuck. My role as a mentor is not to save them from their predicament.

My role is to share with them the knowledge that if they can keep themselves from getting pregnant, from becoming addicted to drugs and from criminal mischief for just 4 more years then they will finally have the power to change their lives.

They do not hear words like college as something that is available to them at home. It’s my job to tell them that they are strong enough to make it. That they can go to college if they just get average grades. They don’t need a boy to save them, because they have the capacity to save themselves. They have a right to demand respect from boys who try to have sex with them. There is a better life out there and its theirs if they can just hang on through high school.

It’s actually really fun to hang out with these girls and its down-right hilarious that they think of me as an “adult.” I still feel so much like them.

I know I’m not “saving” these girls, but my influence in their lives certainly can not hurt.

It’s one of my ways to influence the collective conscience of girlness in a positive way.  

If you too are worried about girls I would encourage you to investigate mentoring. Mentoring.org has collected a lot of mentoring programs in their database and you can search by zip code. It will give you the contact information of a mentoring program right there in your own town. Remember, if you’re waiting until you reach perfection, you’ll wait forever. 

Post from: Blisstree

Influence the Collective Conscience of Girlness