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I receive stories and quotes from “Insight of the Day” in my inbox and the following story comes every Christmas.  Check out the link to the White Envelope Project if you would like to get ideas for a gift.  Enjoy the story!

The following story is a bit of a tradition with Insight of the Day just before Christmas. If you have not seen it before it is well worth the read. If you have, it is worth the reminder.

White Envelopes

It’s just a small, white envelope stuck among the branches of our Christmas tree. No name, no identification, no inscription. It has peeked through the branches of our tree for the past 10 years or so.

It all began because my husband Mike hated Christmas. Oh, not the true meaning of Christmas, but the commercial aspects of it, overspending, the frantic running around at the last minute to get a tie for Uncle Harry and the dusting powder for Grandma, the gifts given in desperation because you couldn’t think of anything else.

Knowing he felt this way, I decided one year to bypass the usual shirts, sweaters, ties and so forth. I reached for something special just for Mike. The inspiration came in an unusual way. Our son, Kevin, who was 12 that year was wrestling at the junior level at the school he attended, and shortly before Christmas, there was a non-league match against a team sponsored by an inner-city church.

These youngsters, dressed in sneakers so ragged that shoestrings seemed to be the only thing holding them together, presented a sharp contrast to our boys in the spiffy blue and gold uniforms and sparkling new wrestling shoes. As the match began I was alarmed to see that the other team was wrestling without headgear, a kind of light helmet designed to protect a wrestler’s ears. It was a luxury the ragtag team obviously could not afford. Well, we ended up walloping them. We took every weight class. And as each of their boys got up from the mat, he swaggered around in his tatters with false bravado, a kind of street pride that couldn’t acknowledge defeat. Mike, seated beside me, shook his head sadly, “I wish one of them could have won,” he said. “They have a lot of potential, but losing like this could take the heart right out of them.” Mike loved kids, all kids, and he knew them, having coached little league football, baseball and lacrosse.

That’s when the idea of his present came. That afternoon, I went to a local sporting goods store and bought an assortment of wrestling headgear and shoes and sent them anonymously to the inner-city church. On Christmas Eve, I placed the envelope on the tree, the note inside telling Mike what I had done and that this was his gift from me. His smile was the brightest thing about Christmas that year and in succeeding years. For each Christmas, I followed the tradition, one year sending a group of mentally handicapped youngsters to a hockey game, another year a check to a pair of elderly brothers whose home had burned to the ground the week before Christmas, and on and on. The envelope became the highlight of our Christmas. It was always the last thing opened on Christmas morning and our children, ignoring their new toys, would stand with wide-eyed anticipation as their dad lifted the envelope from the tree to reveal its contents. As the children grew, the toys gave way to more practical presents, but the envelope never lost its allure. The story doesn’t end there.

You see we lost Mike last year due to dreaded cancer. When Christmas rolled around, I was still so wrapped in grief that I barely got the tree up. But Christmas Eve found me placing an envelope on the tree, and in the morning, it was joined by three more.

Each of our children, unbeknownst to the others, had placed an envelope on the tree for their dad. The tradition has grown and someday will expand even further with our grandchildren standing around the tree with wide-eyed anticipation watching as their fathers take down the envelope. Mike’s spirit, like the Christmas spirit, will always be with us.

Nancy W. Gavin

This story is a true story and inspired four siblings from Atlanta, GA to start The White Envelope Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting this tradition and charitable giving. The White Envelope Project founders are regularly in touch with the family in the article and are thrilled to have their support. The Gavin family and now thousands of others continue to celebrate the “white envelope” tradition each year. For more information about The White Envelope Project or to honor a loved one through a “white envelope” gift this year, please visit their website: http://www.whiteenvelopeproject.org/

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Why a stay-home dad can be bad for boys (but not girls)

The Bristol (University) project - which was financed by the UK Government’s Economic and Social Research Council, came up with some correlation between kids who are brought up by dads and their marks in school, but only with negative effects found with boys.  Apparently dads are unable to mentally stimulate their sons at an early age and these ‘test subjects’ scored low on aptitude tests.  The actual study is not posted in the article but it would be interesting to see the actual controls and variables that were involved. 

“Dr Washbrook said: “I find robust evidence that boys - but not girls - who spent at least 15 hours a week in paternal care when they were toddlers performed worse on academic assessments when they started school.”

I wonder if there is any consideration that girls develop at a quicker pace in the early years than boys or has this only been found as a physical difference?  Girls tend to develop physically at a more rapid pace earlier than boys so maybe the same is true with mental development.

She added: “This cannot be explained by the economic or psychological characteristics of parents in these families, nor by the characteristics of the child.” “

It goes on… 

“women might be more confident and more skilled at bringing up children, and that there might be “harmful emotional effects” from the absence of a mother.”

I’m starting to believe the study may have been conducted by a group of female activists.  The suggestion that dads can’t fulfill the ‘emotional needs’ of their children as well as moms is absurd.  There is the “I carried you for 9 months” bond between mother and child but I believe fathers can have an equally as strong bond IF they spend enough time with that child. 

It goes on to say that the Government was investigating further laws to allow fathers “to be able to play a bigger part in bringing up their children”.  Maybe some think that the new laws allowing paternity leave may be a bad idea due to the findings of this study?        

One of the commenters on the article takes her owns personal experience and generalizes it to the male population as a whole.  Some people just shouldn’t post comments (it’s not like my post is a comment or anything), hahaha.

“…children benefit from their Mothers being at home, because ‘most’ Mothers are usually the more caring and warming people every child needs to experience within their homes. Yes fathers can be loving but not in the same way a Mother is.”

Enough about this but I thought it was interesting the UK government would advertise findings of a study that they don’t understand the cause of.  Then go on to blame dads for the negative findings.  The last point I would like to make is that the study shows a difference between boys and girls.  This study apparently proves dads are only ‘bad’ at helping their sons develop mentally and not their daughters.  I’m not sure how that works but I would suggest the study is possibly incomplete or missing something!

I’m sure there are differences between how females and males bring up a child but I would leave it at just that…different…not better or worse because everyone does it differently.

Another author talks about the study at the Society Guardian.