Plano Early LIONS Club learns about “Generous Kids”

At their Saturday meeting, the Plano Early LIONS Club welcomed Lyn Baker, co-author of “Generous Kids”. Ms Baker talked about how parents and grandparents can change the children in their lives from being of the “mine” set to the generous set. Her book outlines simple ways to teach children how to be giving, and it’s as easy as teaching them to brush their teeth.

Ms. Baker talked about the need to reverse the decline in giving. For example, she mentioned the decline in “Social Capital” that manifests itself in decreasing membership of organizations such as LIONS, Red Cross, and PTA. In 1964 there were about 12 million members in PTA, while today there are about 5.5 million members. Schools are attempting to reverse this trend with programs designed to get schoolchildren involved in volunteer activities… even at the elementary school level. Students who do get involved in volunteer work tend to continue volunteering when adults.

Part of the problem, according to Ms. Baker, is the time children spend in front of screens… both PC and TV. She calls these children “Screeners”. She pointed to research that shows children spend about 2.9 hours/day in front of a PC and another 2.9 hours/day in front of a TV. This produces a generation of “watchers” and not a generation of “doers”. The children then start feeling alone and not connected to people. One example she stated was text messages that teens send to one another. These text messages often contain things they would not say in a face-to-face situation because sending text messages appears very impersonal.

Her parting challenge to the LIONS was to get involved with their children and grandchildren in order to show them how to be “Generous Kids”. One way of accomplishing this task is involving the children in any volunteer work the LIONS are involved with. Projects such as “Penny Harvest” and collecting underwear for the homeless are examples of projects run by students that helped those less fortunate. For more information about “Generous Kids”, visit www.generouskids.com where you can order copies of her book.

For more information about LIONS, visit www.planolions.org or call 972-985-8260.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 9:03 pm and is filed under Past events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.