Bringing a little kindness & reflection to December

Every year, I think about strategies to bring a little more compassion and gentleness into our family.  At bedtime, we practice our daily "rose, thorn, & bud" exercise, have a gratitude jar and have family meetings. We also practice our family mantras, "choose kindness" and "kindness wins” in moments of frustration or sometimes, just because!  While it’s all slowly getting there, I feel a little exasperated when the holidays come around, and my children are writing these lovely holiday wish lists for more stuff as they live in a home filled with (often unplayed with) toys, so much safety and abundance, and heck of a lot of love.  

As such, I’ve always found that our advent calendar is a wonderful opportunity to encourage a daily family reality check, put our kindness into practice  and celebrate all the love, connection and joy in our lives.  In the past, we’ve purchased fifteen $5 gift cards from Starbucks and my kids have handed these out to folks on the street, people they see with a frown on their face or friends at school who need a little pick-me-up. However, this year our Starbucks closed down so I’ve had to get a little more creative. As such, I made these cards, which I laminated and intend to use every year in little pouches I made years ago (we’ve lost Day 7 & 24 ... hmmmm....).  To sweeten the deal, prior to diving into the calendar each day,  I will ask the kids to write down a moment of gratitude (we call this sweetness for sweetness). The plan is that on December 31st, we’ll go through our jar to celebrate all these beautiful, love filled moments. 

Now as for gifts, we have chosen to use this 4 part guide and have had great success in the past! It goes a little like this:  

 Something you want,
something you need,
something to wear,
and something to read.

 We also ask all family memories to forego physical gifts, but contribute to museum or “memory” passes (like going to the NAC or sports games).  It’s worked out rather beautifully thus far and we’ve been able to minimize the amount of stuff we bring into the house (although, truthfully, it’s still way too much!)!  It helps that my kids are totally on page as we have had an ongoing conversation about the environmental impact of consumerism since our trip to Beijing in March, 2018. This year, we’ve challenged the kids to think of recycled gifts and making things using supplies we already have. In fact, I’m still trying to think of something fabulous with the theme of "kindness" for my partner, so if you have any ideas, let me know!  I have 100s of yards of fabric and oodles of yarn - oh, the options! 

Anyway, I thought I’d share our family practice in the off chance you’re madly thinking about something to do for tomorrow’s beginning of advent!  If anything, it’s an opportunity for us to start a conversation about ways to bring kindness into our lives! The more we do this, the stronger we all are as a community of parents.! 

​Wishing you all a fabulous holiday filled with love, health, simplicity and deliciousness,
Rebekka 

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