It’s that time of year when everyone starts talking about what they’re thankful for.
And unfortunately, for many people, it’s the only time we really think about it. Which means it’s the only time our kids think about it too.
Oddly, if we do teach our kids about gratitude, beyond a yearly Thanksgiving prayer of thankfulness for our family, food, and home, it’s usually in the form of yelling at or scolding them.
“Take that and be glad you get anything at all,” or, “There are starving children in Africa who would love to eat that broccoli,” are often as deep as our lessons get on the subject.
Why Gratitude Matters
We live in a “me” generation, where kids (of all ages) have a sense of entitlement when it comes to just about everything. And it only seems to be getting worse.
This attitude is leading to disappointment, dissatisfaction, and even a lack of significant relationships with others as kids grow into young adults.
In addition to combating these results, research — not surprisingly — shows that kids who practice gratitude have a better attitude about school, and that kids and adults alike can be up to 25% happier when they live a life of gratitude.
Being grateful makes us more empathetic, gives us higher self-esteem, and causes us to be more hopeful and optimistic.
Effective Ways to Instill Gratitude
Obviously, lecturing your child about the starving kids and how bad you all had it “back in the day,” never has the effect of transforming her into a ever-grateful little angel.
What can we do to make gratitude a part of who our child is, while upping our gratitude game at the same time?
Here’s eight ideas that will help produce the desired results.
1. Tie in Emotions
This isn’t like teaching your kids how to ride a bike. Gratitude is an emotion, not a skill, which is why lecturing your kids into feeling grateful for what they have and experience in life won’t work.
You’ve got to get them to feel it.
When you’re teaching gratitude, don’t talk about what your child “should” be thankful for. Talk about what emotions certain things, events, and actions make her feel to help her understand what gratitude is, and help instill the emotion.
2. Deny Access
Experiment with what it’s like not to have things, especially things your kids likely take for granted. Do the experiments with them when possible.
This is the best way to get them to feel emotion, again, rather than just telling them what they should be grateful for.
You can do fun things like tying your thumb to your forefinger and trying to get through the day. Yes, your child will actually become grateful for his opposable thumb!
Go 24 hours without the TV or their cell phone (gasp!), or even turn off the heat for a cold day. Don’t do anything to risk your child’s health, obviously, but do they realize how many kids live with blankets and space heaters (at best) for warmth as a way of life?
3. Show Real Stories
Truth is, there are children starving in Africa, as well as America and every other country. Show your child pictures and videos of the real people with real stories. They’re just a click away on the internet.
Don’t just show stories of lack, but also stories of success. People who have come back from adversity and who have succeeded in spite of physical, emotional, or financial limitations.
Start with Facebook Pages like “Humans of New York,” and the many other “Humans of” Pages, including India, Tehran, Bombay, Ireland, Spain, and San Antonio.
Daily Good, TED, and 1000 Awesome Things are all uplifting sites that can be a good source of stories and things to be thankful for. Also, charitable organizations have stories of people less fortunate who have been or can be helped.
4. Let Your Child Choose
You may not agree with what your child decides to be grateful for, but let him choose rather than telling him what he should be grateful for.
Even if it seems silly or insignificant to you, don’t discount it or ask him to pick something different.
He’s learning about gratitude and his sense of gratitude will develop and grow.
And, even if it’s just a Matchbox car or bouncy ball, chances are there is someone out there who would feel very blessed to have it!
5. Add Volunteering to Your Routine
Shelters and “soup kitchens” turn away hundreds of volunteers during the holiday season. Everyone decides to get their gratitude on during this time, in hopes that one dose will last all year.
Sure, any type of volunteering is a good thing, but when it comes to instilling gratitude, one and done won’t do it.
Find an organization that you can contribute to regularly, and make it something your kids can actively participate in. It can be as simple as taking a bag of groceries to the food pantry every month.
Let your child go to the store with you and talk about what kind of food a hungry child her age would like to eat today. Resist the urge to just stock up on the 59 cent green beans that are on sale, that sends the wrong message.
6. Share Moments of Gratitude
Make gratitude a family practice. You can have informal discussions about it as teaching moments come up, name one thing each person is grateful for every night, or have weekly meetings where one item on the agenda is gratitude moments throughout the week.
You can also have a gratitude jar where everyone has the option of writing down something they’re grateful for and putting it in the jar at any time.
At the end of the year, it’s fun and uplifting to go through the jar and read each piece of paper.
7. Take Concrete Actions
Teaching your kids to say “thank you” is nice and all, but do we really feel gratitude each time we say “thank you?”
Hopefully as adults, the answer is yes. But for kids it’s often like saying you’re sorry when you hit your sister, you know if you don’t say it, your mom will make you.
So try taking the “thank you” a little further, by actually making and sending or hand-delivering a thank you card.
You can also have your child help you bake cookies as a thank you, or pick out a token of appreciation at the store.
8. Encourage Experiences Over Stuff
Buying your child everything she wants but clearly doesn’t need dilutes her sense of gratitude and reinforces a sense of entitlement.
Make your child earn or contribute to certain purchases, and choose between two desired items rather than getting both of them.
Engage your child in experiences, especially free or low cost ones, to illustrate how she can have more fun on a walk through the woods with friends or family than with the latest greatest toy that’s she bored with after a week.
Gratitude is a Habit
If you’ll take the opportunity to practice gratitude on a daily basis, it will become a habit for your kids.
That means they’ll no longer roll their eyes and groan when you have your scheduled moments of gratitude because you won’t need those moments anymore.
Once your kids have adopted this attitude of gratitude, it just becomes a way of life.
As we’ve talked about, this will turn your child into a happier person, and will naturally impact the amount of positivity and happiness he spreads among everyone in his life.
As with many things in life, one of the best ways to help your kids with the gratitude habit is to be a good role model. Let them see and hear you practicing gratitude.
To get the gratitude party started, Kids Party Characters wants to let you know that we are truly grateful for you and want to thank you for being a part of our community.
Whether you’re a KidsPartyCharacters.com customer, a fellow work at home mom, or someone who enjoys our tips on raising happy and healthy kids, we all become better moms, business owners, and humans when we’re sharing ideas and experiences with each other.
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