Why Should I Teach Kids The Importance Of Helping Others?

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Teaching kids success principles is an important part of raising kids of character which is why we should teach kids the importance of helping others.

Teaching kids the importance of helping others while they are young will set them up for a lifetime of goodness.

Kids who are kind understand that service is a wonderful thing.

What is the Importance of Helping Others?

“One of the great ironies of life is this: He or she who serves almost always benefits more than he or she who is served.”

– Gordon B. Hinkley

I think a natural human desire is to help and to serve others.

This is good because helping others is an important component of success. But in addition to that, serving others is also a component of happiness.

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Kids Especially Have a Natural Desire to Serve and Help People.

Have you ever had the wonderful opportunity to be around a small child? Particularly a child between the ages of 2 and 4?

Children of this age have an innate desire to serve and help people. They will share their treats and share their hugs and kisses. They are always happy to help pick up or to help cook dinner.

If only we could all have the same love of service and acts of kindness as these little children! Think of the positive impact we would make on the world!

So why do kids grow out of this love of service? And what can we do to help them find this love again?

Benefits of Helping Others

There are so many benefits of helping others, it would be impossible to list them all. But I will make an attempt at listing the top 20 benefits of helping others.

These benefits are even the result of numerous scientific studies.

Top 20 Benefits of Helping Others

1. Helping others helps with chronic pain
2. Helping others makes you live longer
3. Helping others is great for heart health
4. Helping others lowers blood pressure
5. Helping others reduces stress and tension
6. Helping others is emotionally satisfying
7. Helping others promotes positive behavior in kids and teens
8. Helping others is contagious
9. Helping others builds trust
10. Helping others builds your network
11. Helping others builds synergy (connections) with like-minded people
12. Helping others improves our communities and society
13. Helping others boosts your reputation
14. Helping others improves your relationships
15. Helping others instills gratitude
16. Helping others helps get rid of negative thoughts and feelings
17. Helping others positively affects your brain
18. Helping others provides a sense of purpose
19. Helping others results in good karma
20. Helping others causes happiness

Helping Others Causes Happiness

An old Chinese proverb says it perfectly:

“If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.”

Chinese Proverb

Think about the last time you served somebody. How did you feel while doing it? How did you feel after? Chances are, you felt noticeably happier. Acts of kindness and good deeds give us a sense of purpose.

Holding open a door, helping a neighbor with their yard, and giving a kind word to an over-tired mother are all examples of little things we can do to quietly serve others.

But how does helping others promote success? And why is helping others (service and good deeds) considered a success principle?

What is the importance of helping others?

What is the Importance of Serving Others?

A very popular success book is Bob Burg’s book, “The Go-Giver”. In “The Go-Giver”, Bob Burn talks about 5 Laws of Stratospheric Success. He teaches that people who learn and follow these 5 laws find more success in their lives – both personally and professionally.

Interestingly enough, 3 of those 5 laws heavily involve service to others.

You read that right 3 of the 5 Laws of Stratospheric Success are all about helping others.

Helping Others Leads To Stratospheric Success

The Law of Value, The Law of Compensation, and The Law of Influence.

You can read the book if you want all the details (and I recommend you do – “The Go-Giver” is truly a phenomenal book.)

To put it simply:

The Law of Value says:

Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.

The Law Of Value – “The Go-Giver”

If you are getting paid to do $100 worth of work, but you go above and beyond your call of duty and provide $1000 worth of value, you will have one very happy customer. And what do happy customers do? They tell their friends.

The Law of Compensation says:

Your income is determined by the number of people you serve and how well you serve them.

The Law Of Compensation – “The Go-Giver”

Your reach. How many people are you serving?

The Law of Influence says:

Your influence is determined by how abundantly you put other people’s interests first.

The Law Of Influence – “The Go-Giver”

It sounds counter-productive, but the fact of the matter is people will do business with those whom they like, know, and trust. They will also refer their friends. These social connections are of high importance.

Helping others makes us happy and gives us endorphins. Serving others is good for our mental health, our emotional well-being, and our self-esteem. And the laws of the universe have shown time and time again that those who serve others are more successful themselves.

How Do We Teach Our Children the Importance of Helping Others?

We want our children to grow up to be successful human beings. Not just well-educated, but truly successful in all aspects of their lives.

So How Do We Teach Our Kids the Importance of Serving Others?

Let me give you an example from my own life:

Yesterday Jennifer (5) and Eugene (6) were fighting – again.

Those two have sure been at each other’s throats recently. Some weeks it seems like they do this on a regular basis. Telling them to be nice wasn’t working. Sending them to timeout wasn’t working.

It’s certainly not my job to follow them around all day and tell them what to do and how to play so that I can guarantee they are making correct choices.

My job is to teach them how to make correct choices

So I pulled them both aside and told them I was concerned by the amount of fighting they were doing. They both launched into ‘the blame game’ and began telling me how it wasn’t their fault, it was so-and-so’s fault, blah blah blah.

I didn’t want to hear their excuses. I wanted to teach them a lesson.

So I told them they were going to do some service for each other to help them remember they love each other.

I told both of them that they had to come up with 3 good deeds to do for the other person.

They whined and cried, as expected. Let’s be real – it’s hard to serve those we’re angry at. But serving those we’re angry at is perhaps even more important than serving those we love.

But anyways, back to Eugene and Jenna.

Eugene whined and grumbled for a few minutes but then he got to work and ran off to clean Jennifer’s bathroom for her. He worked so happily and did such a good job, I told him this would count as 2 nice things.

He couldn’t think of another nice thing to do for her, so I gave him a few suggestions (he’s still only 6!) and he decided filling up her water bottle would be a good choice. Eugene was happy, he remembered that he loved his sister again, and I can honestly say he was nice to her the rest of the night!

Jennifer whined and cried about being asked to serve her brother. She was mad at him! She didn’t want to serve him or perform any acts of kindness for him. She hemmed and hawed and dilly-dallied until I finally told her she needed to go to her room until she could think about what she wanted to do for her brother.

She threw a good fit in there for quite a little bit. But eventually, she calmed down and came out to serve. I didn’t even know she had come out until I heard the vacuum running upstairs and the kids told me she was cleaning Eugene’s room.

She did 3 good deeds for Eugene without any prompting or pushing. And she was nice and loving to him for the rest of the night!

But we don’t only teach our children to serve when they’re angry. We also take them on family service projects. Weeding neighbor’s yards. Making dinner or treats for neighbors. Helping neighbors move.

We involve our kids many acts of kindness and service. Participating in regular acts of kindness is good for you and gives you a more meaningful life and we want our kids to understand this from a very young age.

Not to mention the rates of depression and good mental health levels are more prominent in people who regularly lend a helping hand and strive to improve the lives of others.

Service is a natural part of their lives. And I believe teaching our kids the importance of helping others is part of why they are so great.

Free Printable Light The World Calendar For Kids

One easy way to help kids learn to serve is to print off a daily service calendar for them to follow. Such as this Kids Light The World calendar!

Read more about the Light The World initiative here.

Providing kids with child-friendly service opportunities they can easily get involved in is one of the easiest ways to teach them all about helping people. So I created this kid-friendly service calendar for your kids to use!

Just follow the button below to access your free download. Print it out and put it where your kids will see it (like the fridge or a bulletin board). Watch them get better at serving others and looking beyond themselves as they go through this calendar.

This calendar was created at Christmas time, but I purposely left the calendar numbers blank so you can use this calendar any time of the year! 25 days of service, again and again, all year long.

You can use the same calendar month after month until an act of kindness becomes a regular part of your child’s life!

Remember – the more your kids practice serving, the stronger their character grows.

Get Your Kids Light The World Calendar!

This is a subscriber bonus and is only available to VIP subscribers.

Or for more service opportunities and ideas in your area, check out justserve.org!

The Secret About Service

Are you ready for the secret to service?

If I’m being completely honest, I would say that service is probably one of my favorite success principles. In fact, I can’t think of a success principle I like more than service.

Helping others is truly fun for me. Serving others makes me happy. And knowing I’ve helped make somebody else happy ALSO makes me happy. Happy, happy, happy!

But service does not come naturally to everybody. Some people struggle with service. Whether it is the actual doing that they struggle with or if it’s the whole overall concept, helping others is not always easy for everybody.

I’ve got a brother-in-law like this.

My brother-in-law is a great man. He is such a kind and loving soul. He works incredibly hard for his family. He’s loyal and generous to those whom he loves.

But only to those whom he loves.

If he doesn’t feel some kind of familial obligation towards you, or if he can’t see what’s in it for him, then he’s not interested.

Ben was telling me about an article he read a while back. I wish I knew the reference. This article talked about only helping others who were either deserving of your help or those that by helping you could see immediate results on your end.

As in – if you served this particular person, you could see the monetary reward you were likely to obtain as a result of that service.

And you know what? That is not service.

At least not selfless service.

If you are serving to get then you have missed the point. The getting part is not the reason you do the service. The reason you do the service is because it is the right thing to do.

The getting is more like God, or the laws by which God is governed, giving you an ‘attaboy’ for doing the service.

When you plan a wheat seed and harvest 1000 wheat seeds, it can feel like an investment. But what about those seeds that get planted and wither and die, as some do?

What if you serve someone and never see a direct result of your service in the form of a measurable ROI (ROI = Return On Investment)?

That is okay.

Why? Simple. Let’s put ourselves in an imaginary scenario. While this scenario is fictitious, things like this happen in our lives all the time – whether we notice or not.

Let’s imagine there are some wild strawberries that are perfectly ripe, growing in your field. They have been growing there for a while and you’ve never noticed them before. But today they manage to catch your eye.

Yeah, those are your harvest. You never planted those. You never ‘did the service’ to get those. God gave you those. God always takes care of those who take care of his/her brothers and sisters.

There is one more thing that needs to be understood for this to work well.

You cannot run faster than you are able.

Or, you cannot breathe out without also breathing in. You can’t always have your heart contracting to push blood. It must also release to let more in.

Service is your sowing season.

You are giving your soil seeds, but it does you no good to grow all that food if you are not also there to pick it. Also, the harvest is your new seed. You don’t need to focus on the harvest for it to show up. If you do the service, the harvest will show up.

So focus on the sowing – the service – the giving. And just be ready when the fruit is ripe to harvest.

Related Posts:

How One Family Lights The World100 Success Principle You Should Teach Your KidsRaising Kids Of Character

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Charlene HessCharlene Hess is the founder of Hess UnAcademy. She spent many years teaching before she had her own kids. She now has 8 kids of her own, whom she has been homeschooled for over a decade.She has now moved on from Hess UnAcademy to focus on her family and her new site, Secret Life of Homesteaders. Latest posts by Charlene Hess (see all)

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Christa

Wednesday 15th of May 2019

This is such a creative way to deal with sibling bickering. I wish I had thought of this when my kids were little. They mostly get along fine now.

Stephanie Dee

Wednesday 15th of May 2019

Great story, and I loved how you used a personal story to convey the message. The Laws of Value, Compensation and Influence are critical to a person trying to be successful, and this post takes a short, simple example and applies it to these complex themes beautifully. Great job.

Charlene Hess

Wednesday 15th of May 2019

Thank you!

Jeanne Vogel

Wednesday 15th of May 2019

Great post on the value of helping others. It is true that what goes around comes around.

Charlene | Better Living Strategies

Wednesday 15th of May 2019

I subscribed and can't wait to read all of your positive posts. Oh and we share the same name! Lol.

Charlene Hess

Wednesday 15th of May 2019

I did notice that! Thanks for subscribing!!

Charlene | Better Living Strategies

Wednesday 15th of May 2019

This was so inspiring to read. When we help others, we put that vibration into the universe and it comes back to us in many ways. I blog about better living and follow the law of attraction so this is right up my alley! Thank you for sharing.

Charlene Hess

Wednesday 15th of May 2019

Yes, I've been following your blog! Your affirmations printable is in my inbox now!

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Quick Article JumpToggle Table of ContentToggle

• What is the Importance of Helping Others?
  • Kids Especially Have a Natural Desire to Serve and Help People.
• Benefits of Helping Others
  • Top 20 Benefits of Helping Others
  • Helping Others Causes Happiness
• What is the Importance of Serving Others?
  • Helping Others Leads To Stratospheric Success
• How Do We Teach Our Children the Importance of Helping Others?
  • Free Printable Light The World Calendar For Kids
• The Secret About Service
  • Related Posts:

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