Fight back against the wave of greed Teach your kids to make home made gifts by Joey Lewitin To a large extent the holidays have come to be more about materialism than the original values of peace, harmony, and faith. Advertisers hit us from all sides with messages of greed and pettiness. Every media outlet is rife with the idea, “buy this, or they won’t love you.” In such an age, it is important to remind children about the true meaning of the season. This can be done, to some extent, by halting the cycle of gift buying and giving, and encouraging them to make the gifts they give by themselves this year. This has several major benefits.

1. In building the gift you will be spending time with the child doing something constructive.

2. It will teach them the value of money. The item they buy would have to be made just like the item they make themselves. Money doesn’t just appear it has to be earned, and then traded. So money is trading work, for work.

3. It will engage their imaginations and creativity.

4. The gift they create will be much more meaningful, and you should let them know that.

As you can see, there are a number of benefits to having your child build a gift themselves. At a young age this is obvious, many kids already do, but as they grow up it becomes more and more likely that a young adult will simply dole out some cash to get gifts for others. This is an unhealthy mind set to get stuck in. You should reassure them that if they spend some effort planning, designing, and building a gift, it will be a much more powerful and poignant gesture then simply taking the easy route and going to the mall. Building a gift is easy. Different levels of skill can accomplish different things of course, but the mediums are fairly similar across all ages.

You can encourage the child to make you a card or a picture. You can give them clay or plaster and let them sculpt. Or you can suggest they write you a poem, or a story. They can even take some pictures for you and frame them.

You should play to the child’s interests. If you get them started on a single project, it could click with them giving them a hobby for years to come. Try and get them to be creative, and stretch their limits. Most important of all, be encouraging. The child is a new artist, and so will be hesitant about their work. This is your chance to help their self esteem at the early stages of a new craft. Joey Lewitin is an author, artist, and designer of unique stone furnishings and home décor. The original designs of him and others can be seen at the site http://pebblez.com