by Sharon Early

Created on: December 26, 2007   Last Updated: September 22, 2010

A great way to interest your children in humanitarianism, and teach them compassion for their fellows, is to get them involved in charity drives and events and to participate in such activities with them. If you are one of those people who shudder at the lack of empathy and sympathy that you find in many of those angry children that we are seeing more and more of on talk shows, on the street, and in the news when some tragedy such as the Columbine High School shootings, occur and the media then tries to help people understand what kind of child would do such a thing.

Recently I witnessed a great bonding and child rearing activity and it really made me think about both the child, and children today in general. One Saturday afternoon recently I went to the local recycling place to turn in some bottles and cans that I had been saving. While I was there I heard this piping little voice telling her mom that "Dad forgot to take the tabs off of his cans again." I let this fly right by me, lost in my own contemplation of the day. Then that little piping voice says from right next to me, "Excuse me ma'am, um I was wondering if I could take the tabs off of the top of your cans?" What she wanted was the little thumb tab that opens the can off of the top of my aluminum cans. She even had a pair of gloves with her for doing this and not cutting her fingers. When I inquired as to why she would want to do this she and her mother informed me that there was a local charity drive that collected aluminum can tabs from people and that for each can tab that they received in their donation box the hospital and some local business were donating one minute of dialysis treatment to the children at the Children's hospital who had trouble affording the high cost of treatment for children with kidney failure, who must undergo this procedure weekly in order to live. I had lots of cans and I let her take them off of as many as she could before she and her mother were set to leave. I even helped her take the can tabs off.

They went ahead and recycled their cans and plastic bottles and such and then the little girls Mom says to her "So how much more money is going into your bank for our vacation next month?" then she told her, go sign the receipt for your money. I forget how much it was exactly, something like 25 bucks or something close and in her exuberance she started bouncing around going "YAAAAAAAAAY!" It turns out that she and her mother had been saving recycling money all year in a

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