Can I Help My Child Learn Gratitude?
We all learn from a young age the basics of gratitude, or at least we think we do. Our society is able to help children grasp the essential pieces. We do this through various ways, such as saying please and thank you, talking about what we do for each other, and more. Something still seems to be elusive as children grow up, and sometimes it’s hard to get them to recognize all the things around them using a sense of thankfulness.
Why Should Kids Use Gratitude?
Gratitude is instrumental in helping our children become well-functioning adults. There are many areas of life that are impacted when kids learn to be thankful, including: greater emotional resilience, better connections with others in their relationships, overall improvement in mood, and even greater physical health. If this list feels like it covers almost all areas of a child’s life, that’s because it’s true! Gratitude truly impacts every aspect of life.
How Can I Help My Child Learn More About Gratitude?
Children learn best through action and being engaged, because it helps them utilize all of their ways of learning. Some of the best things that any parent can do are to do gratitude or thankful activities with their children. Here are two of my favorites below:
-The Gratitude Tree: Create a tree trunk with your child with any medium that works best for your family (can be hand drawn, created with paper, etc.). This is your chance to get creative! Be sure to leave space between “branches” so you can add your leaves. After your trunk is ready, get colorful paper and draw different leaves, cutting them out after. Then, throughout November (or however often you want to put on some leaves), pull out a leaf each day and write one thing each family member is grateful for. Then, glue or tape each leaf on the tree until your tree is full. Be sure to talk about what each person wrote and why it’s important to them.
-Random Acts of Gratitude: This is a twist on the classic random acts of kindness activity. Encourage everyone in your home to go throughout the day noticing all of the things everyone does for each other. When one of the acts sticks out to them as something they’re particularly grateful for, tell them to show or tell the other person they’re thankful for what they’ve done. They can do this through their words by saying thank you or explaining why it’s important to them. They can also show it by giving the person a hug, repaying their gratitude by doing something for them, or giving them a note or card with their gratitude. Discuss what the experience was like for everyone involved, and focus on what people receiving the gratitude felt as they were recognized.
The most important part of both of these activities is to make sure you’re talking about it together. Here at Become You Therapy, we believe that what makes healthy and strong connections in our community and personal relationships is to keep communication open and clear. It’s very powerful when parents talk about what they’re grateful for with their kids, because it shows them that thankfulness doesn’t stop when you grow up. You will be modeling how to show gratitude through your words, actions, and through caring conversations.
Gratitude isn’t just a word or a selection of a few words that we talk about every Thanksgiving. It’s an important part of what makes a strong, healthy, and resilient child. We should constantly be modeling and engaging in gratitude with our children, teens, and even the adults in our lives.
