The most impactful lessons our kids learn are those they observe in our own attitudes and behaviors. Make it a habit to practice gratitude.
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At this time of year, it’s not usual to start seeing a large number of articles and posts about focusing on gratitude and giving thanks.
No matter how old you are, there are always new lessons to be learned and old habits to discard when it comes to being a more grateful person.
In a recent Huffington post article, Finally, a Cool Formula for Teaching Kids How to Be More Grateful, From a Gratitude Researcher (and Dad), author Paula Spencer Scott shares some insights from university researcher Jeffrey Froh on how to make gratitude more of a social skill that kids need to learn.
I whole heartedly agree with Froh’s advice that as parents, we need to build a “culture of appreciation” at home. He says that for any of us to feel truly grateful, we have to recognize three things:
- The intent: that somebody put me first.
- The cost: what someone gave up for me (such as their time or their money).
- The benefit: what I got out of it.
The idea here is that it’s incredibly important to help our kids see that to be truly grateful, they must realize that when they receive something, someone else had to put them first.
Kids also must know that some type of trade-off had to happen for them to receive what was given. Either the giver gave up time, money or effort in order to provide something to them.
And finally, kids must be aware that what they received provided a valuable benefit to them. That benefit may be very easy to see, as tangible or perhaps it’s a less obvious intangible benefit.
But I would like to go a step further.
As parents, most would agree that we want to focus on making sure that we develop a genuine, long lasting attitude of gratefulness in our kids.
If that’s your goal, then it’s imperative that you go about it in a very deliberate and intentional way.
Most attitudes are “caught and not taught.”
What I mean is that the most impactful, longest lasting lessons that our kids will ever learn are those that they observe in our own attitudes and behaviors, much more so than in the words we say.
Our actions and attitudes are literally “caught” or transmitted to our kids, even when we aren’t aware that it’s happening.
For example, when as a dad, you show genuine thankfulness in your everyday life, even about the seemingly most insignificant things, your kids are soaking up your gratitude like a sponge.
They are very likely to imitate and incorporate into their own beliefs and thinking the attitudes and actions they see coming from you much more than any lecture or passing remarks you make about the importance of being grateful.
The other side of that same coin is when our own attitudes and actions are not matching up with our words and actions about gratitude; this can actually do much more harm than good.
Our kids can easily see through our attempts to steer them in a direction that we ourselves aren’t practicing routinely.
It can really be a challenge to be a gratitude role model for our kids, especially when our lives at times seem so stressful and overwhelming.
And let’s face it, there are plenty of times every day when it’s much easier to be ticked off than grateful.
So with the idea in mind that we have to be intentional with our gratitude, here are four ways that you can easily begin to weave gratitude into the culture of your kids’ lives.
Being a great parent means taking the lead, showing the way and modeling the attitudes and actions that you want your kids to emulate.
Remember, people do what people see.
- At least three days a week, tell your kids how thankful you are for each of them, and one thing about each of them that you are thankful for, specifically. Have them share one thing they are thankful for about you and then perhaps each of their siblings.
- (I’ve found that setting a reminder on my smart phone is a great way to stay consistent).
- Make it a part of your family culture to thank each other for routine tasks. You don’t have to go overboard with it, but saying thank you for things that are routine and expected goes a long way toward forming a gratitude habit. Maybe telling your kids “Thanks for not having to be reminded to do a chore,” or “Finish homework” is a good place to start.
- Model behaviors of gratitude when you are out in public with your kids. Thanking restaurant servers, grocery store clerks and anyone you are interacting with in a pubic venue is a powerful way to reinforce what living in gratitude looks like. It may take some effort to find these opportunities, but they are there!
- When you find yourself in a time of crisis or life challenge, make sure you find something during that time for which to be grateful. One of the most important times to model gratitude is when everything seems to be falling apart.
Finding things to be thankful for, even in the midst of life challenges and times of crisis, is so very important to model for our kids.
We are demonstrating that even when life gives us challenges, we can still maintain a heart of gratitude for all of the things that are going right.
This is a life habit that tends to separate those who succumb to the weight of the challenge from those who thrive through their sense of resilience and gratitude.
At this time of the year when families are gathering to celebrate various holidays, many people are facing unhappiness, loneliness and even despair about their circumstances and life situations. It may seem impossible, at first, to find anything to be genuinely thankful for when everything seems to be going wrong.
But I want to encourage you today to take a few moments to think of three things that are going right and that you can be grateful for in your life.
Maybe it’s your health, or that you have a job or even things as basic as you have a place to live and food to eat.
Start your list at whatever point you need to so that you can begin to recognize that you are truly blessed to have many things we often take for granted.
You can find, as I have, that intentionally creating a habit of gratitude will very naturally overflow into the lives of your kids and into the culture of your home.
And in the end what you will discover, is that not only do your kids become the beneficiaries of your intentional gratitude living, but you begin to reap the tremendous benefits as well!
“As we express our gratitude we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” ~ John F. Kennedy
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock