123. How to Raise Kids Who Want to Give

In this episode, I’m talking about something many moms quietly worry about during the holidays: “Am I raising a selfish child?” I walk you through what’s really happening inside your child’s developing brain — the loud wanting and the quieter, growing capacity for generosity — and why both are normal and healthy. You’ll hear the science behind children’s big emotions, their self-centeredness, and their surprising natural ability to give. And then I’ll show you how to grow generosity in a warm, connected, shame-free way through simple practices you can begin right now. This is a hopeful, grounding conversation that I think every mom needs this season.

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Transcript

If you've ever worried that your child is too focused on getting during the holidays, I have news that's going to bring you so much relief. Your child isn't selfish. They're developing exactly as they should. And today we're going to learn how to help kids get exposed to and learn to love to give. This is Leadership Parenting, how to raise kids who want to give. Did you know that resilience is the key to confidence and joy? As moms, it's what we want for our kids, but it's also what we need for ourselves. My name is Leigh Germann. I'm a therapist and I'm a mom. Join me as we explore the skills you need to know to be confident and joyful. Then get ready to teach these skills to your kids. This is Leadership Parenting, where you learn how to lead your family by showing them the way.

Hello everyone. So glad to be with you guys around this holiday time. Every year around this time, I hear the same quiet worry from moms. Am I raising a selfish child? It comes up when their child melts down over not getting the toy they wanted, or when the gimme's get louder, when you suggest donating old toys, has that ever happened to you? And they clutch every single stuffed animal like it's a precious treasure. And you're thinking, oh my gosh, am I doing something wrong? Today I want to talk about this with you, about your kids' behavior, about your desires for them, the things you want to see going on in who they are and in their value system. And I want to talk about generosity, but not in the way you might expect. Because here's what I've learned after 30 years of working with families. Your child isn't selfish and you're not doing it wrong. What's actually happening is so much more interesting and so much more hopeful than that.

Your child has two powerful capacities living inside them at exactly the same time. The wanting is loud and urgent, that desire they've got. And the giving is quiet, but it's there. It's already growing, already present. And your job is not to eliminate one, to make room for the other. Your job is to help both parts flourish. Isn't that a relief? Have you ever thought of it that way? It is so helpful when we look at our children as having different parts to them. This is also very applicable to ourselves. That it's okay for kids to have parts of them that are undeveloped and underdeveloped, and other parts maybe that are stronger than others. And I want to talk about what's really happening in a kid's brain and what your actual role is and how to build generosity in a way that feels safe and connected, and most importantly, I think shame-free.

So let's talk about those two worlds that are going on during the holidays, especially. World number one, I call it the world of wanting. This world is ruled by the bottom part of the brain, the lower brain, your child's emotional center. And it's run by a dopamine system that is legitimately more intense than yours. And that's only because you're an adult, because when you were a child, you were in the same underdeveloped state that your child is in. And research shows us that kids' nucleus accumbens, that's the brain's primary reward center, it has a stronger, more reactive dopamine response than an adult brain has. When they see something they want, their brain doesn't just whisper, that would be nice. It shouts, I need that now, right away. It's not entitlement, even though it can look like entitlement. It's actually much more based in neurobiology.

So when your child fixates on a toy, when they're whining for one more thing, when they cry because they didn't get what they hoped for, I want you to not see that as a character flaw. I want you to see that as a brain response. That's the wanting brain doing exactly what it was designed to do. And here's the part that always helps me release all that judgment and worry that I have. Because, you know, we want them to wait. We want them to not need stuff. But don't we also want them to want? We want them to feel excitement. We want them to experience anticipation and joy and delight. And I think we even feed that. We talk about lists with them. We ask them what they desire for their gifts. We work really pretty hard to try to please them and get them what they want. So we kind of buy into the whole system.

I'm not saying we're part of the problem. I think if you frame it, that there's no balancing, there's no appreciation, there's no gratitude, there's no learning to live with disappointment, then wanting is too much by itself. But most of us, I think, are pretty good at balancing those things. And yet we feel so ashamed when we see a child that's not able to kind of get to that higher level of behavior or thinking and the gratitude or the not being disappointed. What I want to say is we participate in that. And I think it's okay. As a matter of fact, I think it's good. Wanting isn't the problem.

Let's talk about world number two. That's the world of giving. That's the other part of the brain that's quieter, that's slower growing, but it's still very real in their biology. This part lives in the prefrontal cortex of our brains, the area responsible for empathy, perspective taking, thinking about someone else's needs or their feelings. And here's what matters: this part develops very slowly. Some of our kids don't even have a fully developed prefrontal cortex until they're well into their 20s. But it is there in small, powerful ways. Your child already has a natural capacity for generosity. You don't have to install it, it's already there. But I think we see the big loud wanting part and we panic that the giving isn't there.

So I want to reassure you, it is. It's just quieter. It needs more support, it needs more practice. We kind of have to teach our children what it is and help them notice it and recognize it. So let's talk about the grief that we feel or the shame that we feel as parents when we think that our kids aren't accessing the giving part of their brain, that they're very self-centered. Sometimes we say that, right? Oh my gosh, they're so self-focused. All they think about is themselves. Well, I want to submit to you that self-centeredness is not the same as selfishness. In developmental psychology, we know that children are naturally egocentric in their early and middle childhood.

Egocentrism just means your child can't yet reliably hold another person's perspective and their own at the same time. The prefrontal cortex, the part that lets us understand someone else's feelings, it's one of the slowest developing regions of the brain. So when your six-year-old doesn't notice that you're exhausted, or when your nine-year-old can't understand why their sibling is upset about something, that's not always them being unkind. That's them being developmentally normal. And this matters so much because when we label our kids as selfish, we start parenting from fear and frustration instead of from clarity and connection. And of course, that doesn't stop us from then having to talk with them about trying to have empathy and understand what their sibling is feeling and teaching them that when we're tired, they can be kind to us. We're helping them bridge the gap from where they are to where we want them to be. So we're guiding them really more than we're correcting them, and we're teaching them more than we're shaming them.

And we can do that because we're not feeling so fearful, because we know that that self-centeredness is temporary and it's developmental, and we can relax a little bit. And that applies to this concept of wanting kids to learn how to give. Because even though kids are self-centered, they are wired to give. They're not there yet from an adult perspective. They're still more self-centered than other focused. But here's some really interesting research that we have that shows us that even though kids are primarily egocentric and focused on themselves, they're also genuinely wired to give.

There's a study from the University of Washington's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences that makes my heart just kind of squeeze. The researchers found that 19-month-old toddlers, really just babies, gave up their own food to help another person, even when they were kind of liking their snack. Think about that. Toddlers who can barely talk, who are in the most egocentric stage of development, they still choose to give. Now, maybe not every time, and not every toddler at that point in their development. But in general, we know that even small children have a capacity for generosity. It's just a seed. It's not a full-blown plant yet. And it's your modeling and your conversation and your teaching that helps that grow.

The Greater Good Science Center found that children whose parents openly model acts of kindness are significantly more likely to behave kindly and give to others themselves. And when we talk with our children about giving, it increases the likelihood that they will learn to give themselves. Remember, that's talking with them, teaching them, not lecturing them, not pointing out all the times that they don't do it naturally, just this warm, meaningful conversation. When we say, as we're wrapping a gift, I wonder how they'll feel when they get this. Or what do you think would really make them smile? Or why do you think giving matters? That's it. That's the magic.

And I think it's important that we make this a conversation and we talk about it, remember, not as a guilt trip, but with curiosity or interest. I think sometimes kids hold back from giving, not because they don't care, but because either they don't have it top of mind or often they don't think that it will make a big difference. There's another study that shows that children consistently assume that their giving will not matter very much, that they didn't anticipate the people that they were giving to would have as much happiness as they actually had. And so our role as a parent is to help them, I think, see the real impact that they have, help them notice the smile that someone has or the relief when someone gets a gift for something that they need or the joy that they're experiencing.

That's more of our job is to expose our kids to giving, to find it when it's happening naturally and point it out to them and share it with them and help them start to build that bridge from where they are to where we know they'll eventually get, to be able to think about how other people will feel. That's our job. Our job is not to eliminate our kids' wanting. We don't want to force generosity through pressure or shame. Our job is to delight in our child, in all of who they are, and stay connected even when they're stuck deep in the wanting and expose them to opportunities to give and help them practice generosity in small, meaningful ways and show them again and again and again how giving can feel good and be patient with them when they don't get it the first, second, or even hundredth time.

Because our kids need both giving and receiving. And I think we can fall into a trap that giving is morally superior, that wanting things is somehow not right. But receiving joyfully is also a skill, too. And it's one that we tend to struggle with: accepting gifts, accepting service, feeling delighted, and allowing ourselves to be happy. We want our kids to light up when they receive something and to experience the warmth of giving, not one or the other, but both.

So let's talk about a few ways we can build this generosity, this giving without shame. Number one, we can model giving. It's the strongest predictor of generosity in children. Our kids need to see us giving in real time in ways they understand. So I think it's helpful to narrate what we're doing. A lot of times kids are with us when we do stuff, but they don't know what we're actually doing. You could say, I'm dropping off these clothes at the donation center because I think someone else could use them. I really want to help people get what they need. Or come with me while I bring Mrs. Johnson some soup because she's been sick. I want her to know that we're thinking of her. Small, simple, consistent ways that you are showing up and giving and sharing that with your child. That's what's going to build a pattern for them to follow.

Number two, let's talk about giving. We don't need lectures. You just need little moments. I wonder who will get this toy when we donate it. How do you think they'll feel? What do you think makes giving feel so good?

Number three, let your child choose. I think this is huge. Choice brings this kind of intrinsic motivation and pressure shuts it down. Have you ever noticed that? Letting them choose what animal they donate, letting them pick which neighbor they're going to give cookies to, letting them decide between making cards for people that are maybe in the hospital or collecting food for people at a donation center or getting a gift from a donation tree at the holiday time for a specific age child and going shopping. That's one of the most meaningful things, right? To take a six-year-old to go shopping for another six-year-old that they don't know, and they have to look at all the toys, and you're going to see the wanting come up. And our job is to allow them to want, to be able to say, of course you're going to want all of these toys. And right now we're going to be thinking about this one little boy who really needs help at Christmas time. What do you think he would like?

And being patient with them when their wanting comes up and helping them know what to do with it. Let's put this on your list too, because you really, really want this, don't you? I can tell. And maybe that's how you know this would be a good gift for the little boy that we're buying a present for. How do you think he's going to feel? If we could see his face when he opened up, do you think it would have a big smile on it? Sometimes we shy away from taking our kids on trips like this, shopping trips like this, because we know the wanting is going to come up and it's going to be a barrier and it's going to be hard. But this is also part of what teaches children to incorporate these feelings into their own experience.

Number four, make giving small, frequent, and fun. Children learn better through everything they do when it's fun. So wherever you can bring giving into your life, year round, it's going to help your children grow this part of their brain. You can draw have them draw pictures for neighbors, help a sibling without being asked, hold the door open for someone, have secret family giving missions once a week, bake and decide who are we going to surprise this time. It doesn't have to be big. It just needs to be consistent.

And number five, remember the research that kids underestimate how much their giving matters? Let's help them see it. You can say, Did you see your face light up? Can you see how that card you gave dad made his whole day feel better? This isn't just words that you're saying to try to make them feel good. This is how a child starts to build an internal sense of what another person might feel when they give to them. These are neural networks that we're building. If anybody ever tells you as a mom that you're just a mom, I want you to literally laugh out loud. Because what you're doing is building complex neural networks that are going to bless your child's life for the rest of their life.

Tiny steps get this done. Modeling what you feel inclined to do. Go with your natural inclination. Do the things that work for you and your family. Give space for your child to want. Don't be afraid of it. And keep finding little ways for your children to fall in love with giving. And remember, your child has both wanting and giving inside them. Neither part is wrong, both will grow. All you have to do is hold space. You're teaching emotional maturity, empathy, and resilience.

Thank you so much for being here with me today. I will see you all next week. Take care. You can always find me on Instagram @LeighGermann or on my website at LeighGermann.com.

The Leadership Parenting Podcast is for general information purposes only. It is not therapy and should not take the place of meeting with a qualified mental health professional. The information on this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any condition, illness, or disease. It's also not intended to be legal, medical, or therapeutic advice. Please consult your doctor or mental health professional for your individual circumstances. Thanks again and take care