This is the time of year that you most often run into someone collecting something for one charity or another, whether it be the bell ringers outside the stores or workplaces collecting for Toys For Tots or adopting a family. I am all for supporting the efforts to help others out, but several years of participating personally and hearing others stories has left something of a bad taste and a scrooge like mentality for me. This year is no exception.
My middle child brought home a flier from school with information about a family his class was adopting for the holidays. Participation was absolutely voluntary, but heavily encouraged. At first, I was pleased that he would get the opportunity to participate and learn a bit more about the need to help out others, then I read the wish list provided by the kids in this family. There were things on there like games for Nintendo DS, games for an XBox and gift cards for the XBox Live service, clothes from specific, higher end stores and even one that specified that they absolutely did not want a particular type of clothing from another, lower end store.
It is things like this that have left me feeling as though I don't want to participate. I can understand that you want to help kids to feel as though they are fitting in with their peers. They tend to already feel like outcasts because they don't have the same types of things that their friends do. I do agree with that to some extent. When I see things like the requests for very specific brands of clothing though, it irritates me. Then to see the gaming requests. It is my understanding that to be able to use the XBox Live service, you need to have access to the internet, which, last time I checked, isn't free. Not to mention, you had to have had the money for the unit itself. Same goes for the DS.
My issue with all of that is why is it that this family needs help? There was no back story at all provided, just this wish list for 3 different kids and a request to help. I want to be able to help out someone that is in need, but I don't want to just give to a family because someone asked. If there is money for things like expensive gaming units and internet services, why do they need my help? There is very possibly a good reason this family was chosen, but the school didn't see fit to share that info and based on what I read on the list, I'm not overly inspired to want to help. Heck, my kids didn't have many of the things that these kids were asking for and they are pretty darn spoiled.
It seems that this kind of thing happens all the time. I've seen many examples myself and heard many, many more stories of others seeing similar or worse. One such story was that a fellow coworker at my old job was in charge of delivering the presents to the family we'd adopted as a company and when he walked in, there was a huge TV, expensive stereo system and expensive car in the driveway. In all, they had much nicer things than my coworker did. The following years, the organization began collecting at a central location to then distribute to the families themselves so that the givers wouldn't see the living conditions of the families they adopted. Another was at my husband's previous job where the company had multiple children that they adopted, each employee getting a child to sponsor and having all the children come to the office to receive their gifts. Some kids had only asked for modest gifts, so that is what they got. Then the upper executives spent lots of money on the kids they had and got them bikes or expensive sports team coats. Since all of the children where there for the gifting, they saw what the other children got, surely leaving bitter feelings in those that got a board game while watching another child get a bike or coveted coat.
How do you feel about participating in charities? Is it something you do and, if so, what kinds of things do you do? Would you participate in a family gift adoption situation similar to the one my son brought home? Sometimes I feel like such a miser when it comes to these things anymore, though I'd really rather I didn't and had something that I could really feel good about supporting.