I am a believer that a guaranteed path to a beautiful and full life is through gratitude. When I feel stuck in a bad or distracted mood, or like the rat race of life and having all the shiniest, newest things is too much, or if I’m trapped in my own self-centered pity party – I have always found that switching my focus to gratitude is the fastest way to turn my self around.
Gratitude turns what we have into enough.
Melody Beattie
We want to raise our kids to be grateful, to be able to look around and notice all the small beautiful things about life and all the people that reach out a helping hand along the way. This is not something that anyone is born with – it is something that we all have to practice each and every day. Something that takes more than just a nice deed during the holiday season every year (to ensure you’re getting presents!) So how do we encourage gratitude in kids, especially in our fast-paced, consumer driven, must-have-all-the-things, high tech society?
How to nurture a grateful heart in your child
Kids are always listening and watching us as models for how a person lives a life. If you are someone who recognizes and speaks about gratitude, your child will be more likely to do the same. So the most important thing we can do as parents is to make sure we are nurturing our own grateful heart.
Parents are very good at teaching manners (reminding kids to say ‘thank you’) but we need to be using our manners too. I’m always surprised by adults who don’t say ‘Thank you’ if I hold a door for them, or who don’t give a wave of acknowledgement when I let their car in front of mine at a red light. I’m not doing the kindness for the thank you, but I always think – Dude, come on – my kids are watching; be a good example of an adult with manners!
We always talk openly and gratefully about people who help us in front of the kids – holding those people who act with kindness and thoughtfulness up like heroes. (they really are!) We model grateful speech by saying things like, “That visit with our cousin made me feel so happy – how thoughtful it was for her to stop by even though I know she is busy too!” or “Can you believe your librarian saved you that book you told her about last week! How kind of her to remember and think of you! We are so lucky she is at our school!” (both of those are real people and real conversations we’ve had at home – we love you Heather and Mrs. Turner!)
And don’t you worry – it doesn’t cheapen gratitude in any way to give it out abundantly. We hand out gratitude with a generous voice, because not only does make it automatic to say it often- but it also reminds you often how much there is to be grateful for (big and small) in our everyday lives. So we tell each other thank you, we tell the kids thank you, we tell our pets thank you, and I even tell random things thank you if it made my day brighter – like, “thank you spider plant for being so darn lovely!” My kids can attest to instances when I have rolled down my window in the car on the back roads of our rural county to shout “You are so beautiful today, Somerset County – Thank you!!”
Thank you cards
One way we try to nurture a grateful heart in our kids is by encouraging them to write and deliver thank you cards throughout the year. We thank the big players in our kids lives – like teachers, coaches, and grandparents – but we also remember to thank the small friendly faces too – like our bus driver, our mail carrier, and our school resource officer. We even put thank you notes in our neighbors’ mailboxes when their flower gardens brighten our neighborhood in the summer and when their holiday lights dazzle us in the winter.
The thing about Thank You cards is that it does double good. The receiver feels good being recognized and the giver feels good by recognizing and then doing something good about it. It’s like a wave of kindness; goodness besets goodness. Get your kids in on this wheel of feel good!
We have our kids color, decorate, and write out a short thank you throughout the year and then give them an opportunity to deliver that thank you to the person who has made our days a little better. Sometimes they just deliver the note, sometimes we add an extra little boost of love in the form of homemade treats too. This act of recognizing kindness, honoring the person through a thank you, and then watching how they can brighten someone else’s day simply by saying thank you – makes such an impact on our kids.
But that’s not to say that it doesn’t sometimes feel awkward too. Some of our own children are willing to hop right up and say thanks and give hugs and have a whole conversation; while we have other kids who would rather slip the note in a mailbox or feel shy about handing over the note. That’s all okay! It takes a lot of practice to begin to recognize blessings and then also speak up about them with a grateful heart! The more practice at it – the easier it gets.
Do you want some ready to print Kids Colorable Thank You cards?
Available now, in my shop is the Kids Colorable Thank You Pack! It includes 14 Thank You card designs (4 general and 10 specific) along with a calendar guide for planning out your gratitude for the whole year, if you need a little encouragement.
All the fonts are readable for young learners (no fancy A’s, T’s, or G’s) and they include fun images to color – or plenty of white space to add in their own designs. The Thank Yous are foldable when you print them, so there is a clean middle space for writing a personal message – or continuing their creative art.
