Taming Your Little DIVA

“Look at the little diva,” I heard a stranger say.

Others laughed and nodded as the little girl twirled around to the background music playing over the speakers at the restaurant. The adults were crammed into the benches near the hostess stand waiting for their buzzer to announce a table was ready, and there she was in the smallest available floor space, dancing her little heart out.

“I think it’s beautiful,” I whispered.

And just like that, the conversation changed. I condensed my soapbox speech on little girls and play and creativity and soon we were discussing the meaning of that word: DIVA.

“It’s Italian,” one man chimed in, “referring to the best female opera singer.”

Everyone turned his way to look. He seemed professorial and he had our attention.

Originally Latin, of the divine.

The lady who had first pointed out our little dancer started talking again, clearly fixated on the negative stigma the word had come to imply. “Well, they do come into the world thinking that they are the only ones in it, demanding their every whim.”

While I sat there, deciding to keep quiet, rolling my eyes on the inside, I thought about how I’m trying to tame my child’s inner diva.

We all have her. We do start out needing our every whim supplied by another – our very infant existence depending on the able bodied adults around us to answer our cries of hunger or pain. Pretty soon that infant becomes a toddler and everyone is coaxing her to learn to share. Enter the school age years and she’s supposed to be growing into a full fledged helper.

How do we teach her?

How do we teach little miss diva to notice and empathize and help others around her?

How do we combat diva-hood so that serving comes naturally, willingly, and not just because we expect it?

There are some highly educated folks talking about that task. Harvard’s Graduate School of Education has its own Making Caring Common Project and is trying to

help educators, parents, and communities raise children who are caring, responsible to their communities, and committed to justice.

But I don’t have the time to keep up with an Ivy League initiative.

I’m a mom.

On some days, I’m a diva.

So I’ve found a simple way to model and include my own little diva (actually he’s a dude) in community service in the Midlands.   

It’s a monthly giving group, Ding Dong Divas.

Rewind quite a few years with me and meet Karolynn Krause Cionek, mom to one of my son’s classmates at St. Peter’s School. “KK” and I became friends more or less because of a little PTO fundraising auction. You ever co-chaired a school fundraising auction?

No worries. That much effort is not required to be a Diva!

Karolynn and some fun friends came up with the idea of a monthly giving club. They welcome darlings (girls) and dudes (boys,) too. And they try to have their gives be as hands-on as possible. Hence, the ding dong!  Karolyn says,

We want to get personal with our gives – door to door if possible. The first few gives we did were delivering soup door-to-door.

So how do diva dudes and darlings actually get involved?

Last July, children with their parents delivered fresh produce to 180 low income seniors. Yes. They helped pack and deliver the bags.

Ding, Dong. I bet some old men and women smiled when they opened their door and saw a child. I bet the child had an experience to remember, too.

Ding Dong Diva‘s largest give was in conjunction with the USO last December. They collected, bagged, and distributed a travel goodie bag to every Fort Jackson boot camp soldier going home for Christmas. Hand written notes – most by children – were in each travel bag.

This month’s give is GAME NIGHT at THE FAMILY SHELTER. I’ll be there with my little dude. I think we’ll both think outside ourselves. I think we’ll have fun. I think I might even dance. And I think Harvard will be proud.

You’re invited.

Find the Ding Dong Divas on facebook or email them for more info [email protected].

They’ve made it so easy. And fun. Answer the call!