Get to know your kids on a whole different level! Spend today planning a Christmas party with them.  Create a list of their friends to invite, plan to make the food your kids enjoy and play games your children will love!

From a very young age, encourage your children to be ‘others-oriented.’ For example, when your kids decide to get entrepreneurial, as most kids will, you can encourage them to mow lawns and sell lemonade so that they can donate the money to help other people, not just satisfy their own purchasing power. In a similar vein, when they do want things, instead of buying them everything they want, teach them to find enterprising ways of earning money. They need to learn how to save for things they want to buy.

We can teach them to be opportunistic. When my oldest daughter, Hannah, was 13, she had an idea that she wanted to use the Internet to help preteen girls through a Web site she wanted to create. I got a mentor to help her learn how to do a little bit of programming. She wrote the code for a Web site called girlofgod.com. She had all kinds of ideas on how she was going to do the art. It was thrilling. She got lots of preteen girls on that site and ministered to them. The vision did not continue for very long, but it was a fantastic life lesson for her. She saw this truth: “If I have a dream, I can learn how to go about achieving it, and I can accomplish something.” Help your kids find opportunities to impact other people and not just indulge themselves; and then show them how to take the vision from an idea stage to completion. Find ways to make the party special and meaningful by asking your kids about their friends’ interests. Prepare an intimate Christmas gathering for your daughter at the house, or plan a football game for your son at the park. Remember the purpose of your plans is to get to know the people your kids are close to.