Thoughts on Practicing Gratitude

We have all been there. You are excited about a special surprise or gift for your child and instead of joy and appreciation, you are met with, “Oh, but I wanted the red one.” It is disheartening and frustrating and I think it bothers me so much because it resonates. It hits too close to home. It reminds me of the discontent in my own heart - the constant need for more and better and different.

I realized when our twins were young that raising grateful children would require not a shift in our parenting but a shift in our family culture. Gratitude begets gratitude. I could not encourage my kids to do something I was not practicing myself.

We get in trouble when we don’t name our feelings, they end up coming out sideways at times and in places that don’t match the situation. I always thought of this truth in regard to anger, jealousy and anxiety - the hard feelings to process. But I’ve realized that it is equally problematic when we don’t name our gratitude. When we don’t pause to give thanks for the people and moments and spaces that make our lives rich and full, we lose sight of what is right in front of us. There is power in naming and recognizing the gifts in our lives.

With that being said, I did not want our kids to feel like they had to feel something that they didn’t. It is just as patronizing and unhelpful to a preschooler as it is to an adult to say in the midst of a hard conversation, “Well, just be grateful for what you have.” Or “I know you’re upset but just look on the bright side.” I tried to validate their disappointments and allow space for their feelings. I also tried to encourage them to name more than one feeling at a time - “It’s okay if you’re feeling grateful and also feeling sad. That is so normal.” This has been a messy and imperfect process. I’ve said the wrong thing. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve had to ask my kids for forgiveness. But beauty has come from our persevering together. Along the way, we have come up with some tools that have allowed practicing gratitude to be a natural and fun part of our family culture.

We starting keeping a family Gratitude Jar which was a fun way to write down things throughout the day that we could come back to later on and talk about. You can find a link to the label and the writing/drawing prompts here. The kids also had fun with gratitude journaling which I also enjoy — it is really neat to look back over journals and see the things that spoke to us on certain days and in different seasons. I will include a link here to the preschool (for pre-readers) journal here. I also have created elementary aged journals for boys and girls that include space for writing and drawing.

There are several books I really love about the power of practicing gratitude but this is probably my favorite one. I will link to it here. My favorite line is, “The more we say thanks, the more we find to be thankful for.”

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For older children I’ve created some fun tools to keep running gratitude lists - these are great to put up in common areas or on bulletin boards. You can print these to use at home or in a classroom for free here.

As with all things in parenting, this practice is fluid, not fixed. Some days feel beautiful and I can see the progress we have made. Some days, not so much. My hope is that we can be planting seeds for and with our kids. Seeds of contentment and gratefulness and awareness. May we be willing to do the work alongside our kids, they are truly our best teachers.