Back in September of 2015 we were teaching Curie the lesson that “anyone who smiles is pretty, and that your actions dictate whether or not you are beautiful.” Since then, it is something that we have reinforced whenever we could and something that we have started teaching Elia, though not as pointedly.
Yesterday, on the day after the inauguration, a week after MLK’s birthday, and on the day of the Women’s March, Albert stayed with the kids so that Erin could go to the march. By the afternoon, to keep the kids busy, they went to the mall to walk around. While waiting for Erin to return and join them, Albert bought a case of Frozen blind boxes at half price at Barnes and Noble’s clearance section and told the kids that they could open one box with Erin at the restaurant.
At the restaurant, Curie asked to open her box and we told Curie that she could open one now before we ate, or two after we ate, and she chose two (marshmallow test); but upon opening them, both of hers and Elia’s were duplicates we already had. We then told them that there were kids who would love to have the toys and that giving is sometimes better than getting. So there we were at Tysons Mall, looking for kids young enough to be unjaded and appreciative, parents who looked like they might be receptive to this lesson we were teaching, and, as a rule, they couldn’t be carrying American Girl doll bags.
Curie found a two year old girl at the Disney store (yes, ironic that we were giving away Disney toys at a Disney store, but it was the same one where we started this lesson in 2015) and before Curie could do her spiel, the girl had the doll in her hands and looked like it was instantly hers. Her mother thought her daughter had taken the toy away from Curie, but we explained that we had duplicates and that we were learning that beauty comes from within, and that the gift of giving is sometimes better than getting. It was well received and she asked the little girl to say thank you, also a good lesson.
Curie had a second Elsa to give, and gave it to a second girl at the store; again we received a positive response, more so in fact: the father seemed genuinely interested in what we were doing, as well as grateful that we were giving the toy to their daughter. As we were doing this, the woman behind the register overheard us and, though we thought she would ask us to stop since it was a store, instead took it to heart and said, “well this needs to be rewarded,” and proceeded to reach behind the counter to give Curie, Elia, and the little girl each a Disney bracelet.
Well, Curie loves little kids to begin with, and was so moved by how grateful the girls were; the fact that she “got for giving”, and that her parents were so proud of her, really reinforced the lesson and she wanted to do more. So, instead of going home to open the rest of the blind boxes, we opened the entire case, and Curie and Elia gave away almost every figure to kids in the mall. There were so many different reactions (the 1/36 rare Olaf with an upside-down head was hard to give away, the first girl gave it back), from pleasant surprise to gratitude, all saying to our kids that giving was as important as getting.
We had been trying to figure out how to include charity in our children’s life lessons with things like keeping one-third of your allowance, saving one-third, and giving one-third, but the kids have been too young to even appreciate money yet. We wanted to go to Arlington to lay wreaths, but that day there was an ice storm. We teach, as often as we can, the strength of kindness, the will of charity, and the importance of from where beauty derives, but it is hard to make an object lesson of it. We got that opportunity by chance on a day where the voice of tolerance was being spoken, and a sleeping giant awoken; the case of blind boxes was a frivolous $36, but it turned out to be a chance to see our kids embrace such an important lesson at such a critical time in history.
A quick addendum from Albert’s Facebook: “So, to be fair, I don’t want anyone to think that our parenting is a bed of roses, FB has a tendency to filter for the things that we want to talk about, things we love and things we hate, so the feed is gets pretty polarized (talking about the mundane in the early days of social media has thankfully largely gone away). I just wanted to say that we have good days and bad days,and yesterday was extraordinary so we wanted to celebrate it. However, there was as much whining and hangry frustration as there was beauty and joy – as it is with any day. It is parenting as it is with life, you take some good with some bad and hope that there is more good than bad at the end of each day.”