Involving children may require coaxing

By KENT S. COLLINS

DEAR SENIOR FORUM: I am just home from visiting my older sister in Michigan. She is widowed and 71 years old. She has four grandchildren living nearby and four volunteer jobs to do every week. She matches the grandchildren to the volunteer jobs.

She gets her own satisfaction out of doing community work. I suspect she would do it without the family tie-in. But her mission is more to make an impression on her grandchildren, ages 8 to 17.

She takes her 17-year-old grandson to sort boxes of food items at a community food pantry that serves the area's working poor. Like most teenagers, this kid is cynical, but seeing the food pantry patrons eases his attitude and makes him more grateful.

She drags her 15-year-old granddaughter --- sometimes kicking and screaming --- to a soup kitchen serving the homeless. The kid apparently has a good heart but a squeamish attitude about being around homeless people.

My sister says, "She'll learn something from this. Intolerance --- even if passive and innocent --- is not to be tolerated. Ha!" My sister takes the two younger grandchildren to church twice a week to vacuum, dust and mop. She wants them to have a sense of serving the Lord.

Their mother is glad they are getting a sense of housework.

The actual duty roster, so says my sister, isn't important. She wants them to serve the community --- any community will do. She wants them to know about the have-nots. And she wants them to be humble, in a culture of aggressiveness. --- YOUNGER SISTER LEARNING LESSONS

DEAR YOUNGER SISTER: Coaxing grandchildren to join in such work is a bit of a trick. Readers anxious to follow your sister's lead should consider starting when grandchildren are young, offering to let them take a friend, rewarding them in the early days with lunch and a movie, and keeping the shifts short --- at least in the beginning.

Los Angeles Times Syndicate

Copyright 1999
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