Service to the community can help draw your family together, help kids understand how their choices and actions impact others, and strengthen community linkages. But how do you pry today’s kids away from the TV screen or computer and develop an ethic of service?

I didn’t marry into a mob of revolutionary idealists. My three stepkids were hard-core suburbanites with a touch of sass. Their lives revolved around their friends, an over-the-top devotion to all things pop culture (think E!, IM and Paris Hilton 24-7), and the social ups and downs of their daily lives. In other words – they were pretty typical.

I was a young and naïve stepmom who’d spent the last ten years as a volunteer and consultant to do-good-causes. So how do you jolt a bunch of teens out of the lethargic embrace of the living room sofa and into action?

1. Ask them to help and make it easy for them to do it. A few years ago, I needed to attach about 5,000 blue and white ribbons to pins and cards to distribute for Child Abuse Prevention Month. I explained the project to the kids over dinner and asked them to help.

When they came home from school for a week, the ribbons were conveniently parked in front of the TV. Ergo – watch TV, start pinning. A bunch of ladies at our church helped out too, and we had the whole thing finished lickity-split.

2. Save some money year-round for a project that you do together as a family. Each year at Christmas time our church collects shoeboxes loaded with gifts for needy children around the world and distributes them through the Samaritan’s Purse. We save loose change in a jar and use it to fund shoebox gifts for needy kids.

The jar isn’t in an obvious spot, but we refer to it from time to time and add to it all year. I think repeating the same project for a few years now, has also helped us get more out of it, rather than having a one-shot volunteer moment buried within a jam-packed schedule.

3. Don’t make service a chore. Let them make choices. Seek out kid-friendly volunteer opportunities with local charities, and do things that really make a difference for real people. Find things you can do together as a family like a trail clean-up or making decorations to take to a nursing home.

Try to give your child options and choices within a service project, especially if they are in their teens. When we pack the shoebox gifts, my stepdaughter picks out some of the items and goes with us to drop them off. Seeing our boxes go into a giant van with all of the others is pretty gratifying, and lets us see that what we are doing is part of something much bigger.

4. Count on the experience to make the impact. Don’t get preachy. One thing about our shoebox project that we like, is that our kids get to see that lots of kids in the world aren’t as well off as they are.

Doing the project together lets us talk about money and giving in front of the kids, and lets their oh-so-consumer-conscious wheels spin a little bit. I can’t say it’s made them less materialistic, but I do think it’s made them more aware of what they have.

5. Encourage kids to reflect on a service experience. Expressing your own feelings about service, and asking children to share their feelings about service (both good and bad), has an impact in the long run because it encourages reflection. During the holidays, we’ll insert into our family prayer at dinner time, a mention of the shoebox gifts and their recipients.

Even if you get a few eye-rolls, remember that service has a positive impact on kids. Kids involved in service to the community get better grades, have better attitudes toward school, and relate better to others. They’re also more likely to consider how they can change society, want to understand how government works, and see a connection between politics and morality.

Service is an expression of who we are and who we hope to become. Consider how you can involve your family in giving back today.

Dawn Miller writes a column on life in blended families at thestepfamilylife.com. 
Visit Dawn's blog for a daily dose of life in the blender.
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