Thankful Thirty #20 (Humility)

"I want, I want, I want!"  I'm sick of hearing it already.  The Toys 'R Us toy catalog came in the mail nearly a month ago and I haven't had a quiet day since.  Every time I think I've hidden it, thrown it away, or incinerated it the blasted magazine reappears, a little more banged up, but still readable and enticing.  My kids are begging me for things they've never heard of and I guarantee would hate as soon as they found it underneath the Christmas tree. To try and combat the vacuum of materialism that can put a damper on the holidays, we sat down as a family tonight for a lesson I called "I Want/I Have." First we did an activity I adapted from the Groovy Storytimes blog.  She said,

For an object lesson on greed, build a small "table." Use building blocks at either end for legs, and a rectangle of thin cardboard, (I used a postcard) for the top...Place a small pile of small stones beside the "table."(We used building blocks) Pick up one of the stones and say, "I want a _______." Fill in any item that you know your kids like. Place that stone on the cardboard tabletop. Pick up another stone and repeat.  Again, fill in the blank with anything, from a bicycle to a Playstation to a pet dinosaur. Place this stone beside the first one on the cardboard. Continue in this fashion until there are so many stones on the cardboard that it collapses. Explain to the children that, if we're not careful, our "wants" can overwhelm us.

Everyone in our family took a turn doing this and then we talked about how when we want things, we'll never have everything we want.  We'll never be happy enough.  Then we did the activity again, but this time I moved the "table" legs together to make a sturdy base for the postcard to lay on.  With each block we stacked this time, we said, "I have ______."  When all our blocks were stacked steady on top of each other, we talked about how focusing on the blessings we have to be thankful for help us to be happier and stronger.

The second part of the activity was to draw a turkey on the chalkboard.  Each person named a thing they are grateful to have and added it as a feather on the turkey.  Then I explained to my boys that every time this week that they started a sentence with "I want...", I would stop them and we'd add another "I have..." feather to our turkey.  They were excited and I thought I was a genius.

Then my great activity kicked me in my own behind.  As we ate our family night treat and got ready for bed, I caught myself choking on my own "I wants...".  Real art when we move into our next house, a newer car seat for my toddler, new pans on Black Friday, and on and on and on.  Apparently, I'm as bad, if not worse, than my kids with their toy catalogs.

I didn't add more feathers tonight because I was able to stop myself before sharing all the material things I was wishing for.  But tomorrow morning, I will add a few important things to our turkey and hopefully by the end of the week our entire family will be focused a little more on the many blessings we have to be thankful for.

I'm grateful for the lessons I learn when I thought I was teaching my kids.