Create Grateful Kids at Any Age With These Simple Strategies
“If you fear your children are swept up in our consumer-driven culture, consider these strategies for instilling gratefulness.”
By Emily Simon, LCSW PIP
Gratitude = being mindful of the unearned benefits that have been extended to you.
As we approach the holidays, we’re shifting our focus into gratefulness for the many blessings we’ve received over the year, yet it’s hard to know how to teach children and teens to be grateful. We kick off the holiday season at Thanksgiving by talking about gratitude, yet immediately afterwards shift into a commercialized version of Christmas that’s nearly impossible to avoid.
Even as we’re hoping to teach our children how to be grateful for the many blessings we enjoy, they’re getting mixed messages from us and from every direction.
As parents, we hope to instill this value in our children and teens, but too often we’re just left with a feeling of how ungrateful or even entitled our children and teens can appear to be.
A common struggle for parents around understanding how to teach gratitude often lies in our expectations. We cringe when our teenagers are complaining about babysitting younger siblings, or when younger ones abandon a brand new toy they had been begging for three days earlier. The fact of the matter is that children and teens cannot fully understand how to be grateful when they don’t even comprehend the sheer amount of work that goes on behind the scenes to make their comfort possible.
For example, I remember saying “thank you” as a child when my dinner plate was served, but I simply didn’t comprehend the steps that were involved in getting it there. Earning the money to buy the food, shopping for the food, and preparing the food were just things that grown-ups just did. My immature brain simply hadn’t gained the experience to understand how much effort is required to make sure the refrigerator stays full.
With teenagers, they’re slowly gaining life experience, but they haven’t yet had to live on their own and be ultimately responsible for making sure all the bills get paid. They also haven’t experienced the unrelenting self-sacrifice that comes along with parenting.
Our sense of gratitude naturally deepens with age, experience and the wisdom that comes along with it.
Just as the hymn tells us to “Give thanks with a grateful heart,” we can only be grateful to God until we fully understand what He’s done for us. And that thankfulness gets deeper every day as my debt of sin grows bigger!
The key to teaching gratitude lies in taking the long view and in teaching a series of small lessons at each developmental level:
With little ones (ages 2-6), we can always focus on teaching the behavior of using good manners in saying “thank you” often and thoughtfully. At bedtime prayers, we can enlist their help with thanking God for the blessings that are important to them in that moment, no matter how frivolous. They are much more likely to understand the happiness they experienced from getting a new Barbie or Lego set than they are that the mortgage got paid.
With older kids (7-13), we can begin to introduce them to concepts like random acts of kindness, volunteering, and increasing awareness that there are haves and have-nots in the world. Allowing the child to be an active participant in providing for a child they select from the Angel Tree or packing a box for Operation Christmas Child are wonderful learning opportunities. We can also introduce the concept of financial generosity by allowing them to use some of their own funds to purchase an item or two.
With older teens (14-18), volunteerism should be an expected activity, both at home and outside the home. I often challenge teenage clients to do just one extra thing for their parent without being asked and think of it as a sacrificial giving of their time and energy. Their parent may not even notice or say thank you, but “our Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.” As our children grow and gain life experience, their gratitude will naturally deepen, but we can begin to lay the foundation of daily gratitude practice in small ways.
As parents,
…let us be grateful that our children don’t yet fully understand how hard it is to make sure food is on the table. Let us give thanks that God has given them a safe, easy childhood where they can focus on being a child. Let’s pray that we can instill in them a knowledge of their need for a Savior and an awareness of the needs of others.
Let us pray that He will help us parents to be an example of continual thanksgiving for Him.
*** A few Gratitude Game ideas for Traveling***
Play the Alphabet Game, but each person must choose an item that they’re grateful for and explain why. Example – “A is for Airpods. I’m grateful I can listen to my music anywhere.” “B is for baseball. I’m grateful that you guys helped me get to every practice.”
Gratitude Scattergories – pick a random letter. Each person must make a list of everything they can think of to be grateful for that begins with that letter. Whichever player has the most unduplicated words wins!
Print off a Gratitude Scavenger Hunt activity that encourages them to notice little things to be thankful for, such as “something that makes me smile” or “something that’s fun to climb on.”
Emily Simon works as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Counselor with Joyworks Counseling, LLC in Daphne, AL.
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