"Your Child" does not equal "them" and "their."

I am back on my podium about subject/verb agreement today. Melissa Rayworth made some good points in a recent Associated Press article about parents involving children in charity during the holidays. However, she tangled up the agreement issue in her third paragraph with this sentence:



For example, helping your child gather used coats for donation to a homeless shelter can teach them more about their family's values than a dozen lectures on compassion ever could.



Good point, but YOUR CHILD refers to ONE person. Both THEM and THEIR are plural, so the grammar does not work. The most appropriate change here would be to use the word CHILDREN so that the whole sentence is plural:



For example, helping your children gather used coats for donation to a homeless shelter can teach them more about their family's values than a dozen lectures on compassion ever could.



If you don't like the plural version, you can still avoid the awkward HIM/HER usage by rewording the sentence this way:



For example, helping your child gather used coats for donation to a homeless shelter can teach more about family values than a dozen lectures on compassion ever could.