Gratitude helps our kids cultivate optimism, hope and resilience. It comes with a host of well-being benefits that take form socially (supports the forming and maintaining relationships), physically (better sleep, activates relaxation mode), and psychologically (increased happiness and life satisfaction, greater school engagement). All the things we need to help them with right now!
What is Gratitude?
Gratitude is our ability to focus on what’s working in our lives and being able to acknowledge our appreciation of it. It is the recognition that we are the receiver of something of value from others, our environment or other contributors (pets etc).
The Power of Gratitude
This week’s message is all about using gratitude in the transition phase to help our children focus on what is working and build positive emotions. Practicing gratitude can also help grow optimism within us and build hope. These are all necessary well-being functions. It can also aid our kids with:
Psychological Health
- “better physical and psychological health
- increased happiness and life satisfaction
- less likely to suffer from burnout
- greater interest and satisfaction with school life
Social Health
- greater social integration
- pro-social – more generous, kind and helpful
- supports the forming and maintaining of relationships
- It helps our kids
- Find: identify people who they can create quality connections with
- Remind: them of the goodness in others
- Bind: the friendships together as they feel appreciated. Which in turn encourages behaviours that can help prolong relationships”.[1]
When we share our gratitude with others, it grows – we can talk more about that at another time!
Physical/Emotional Health
- Better sleep
- Greater levels of optimism and hope
- Ability to cope with stress
- It can also activate the parasympathetic nervous system – like deep breathing.[2]
Attaining the benefits
There are two things that make all the difference with gratitude and increasing the likelihood of attaining the benefits from it:
- Practicing it regularly. The great thing is it’s an easy behaviour to model and to help our kids learn. My suggestion is to choose a time to incorporate it into your routine. It is very uplifting.
- Character Trait (your personality) We all hold this trait to a greater or lesser extent. The more we practice it, the more likely we are to develop it as a higher character trait. People who report as being higher in the character trait, also report as receiving more of the benefits!
Practicing Gratitude
The simplest way to start a gratitude practice is to think about three things you’re grateful for and why.
Build a Gratitude Routine
Model It
With any family I coach, we start with gratitude practice and ask the parents to start a gratitude journal. Once they feel they can say it aloud and in-the-moment, they start sharing their gratitude as feedback to their kids throughout the day. It builds positive emotions, reciprocity, and connection in the home. Our kids model our behaviours, so after a little while, what you’re doing and saying, come’s back.
At Dinner/Before Sleep
We practice three things I am grateful for and why around our dinner table each night. It was a way we could embed the practice as a daily ritual for our family. Sometimes it overflows into bedtime as well. One of the twins, Eli, has a grateful disposition. When she gets started, she keeps finding more and more things she is grateful for that she would like to share, so when she goes to bed and has more to add to the list we encourage her to share and develop this personality trait.
Our kids can prepare what they want to say using our Kids Who Shine placemats.
In transit
Recently I was speaking with a Mum who practices gratitude with her twins on the way to school. She found it helps with settling them into their school routine and the separation anxiety they experience. Her twins are also 4 YO.
With movement: Gratitude Hot Potato
If your kids are on the move and you struggle with getting them to sit and focus on the conversation, play a gratitude game! Get a soft ball and play gratitude hot potato. Throw the ball to each other and every time you catch the ball, you need to say something you’re grateful for.
Showing Gratitude
Another great way to build gratitude and help our kids get the benefits of gratitude is to share their gratitude with others either face-to-face, or via a letter or card.
We can encourage our kids to show their gratitude by writing letters, drawing pictures, a phone call or in person. What’s important, is for them to share what they are grateful for and why. We have a few fun activities online at Kids Who Shine to help with the process.
Another fun activity you can do at home is to colour your own gratitude garden. We’ve included a 100% code below so you can download it for your kids.
Support the learning
I mentioned earlier that one twin, Eli, has a natural disposition (trait) of gratitude, Adi finds it a little more challenging. Coming up with what she is grateful for is easy but articulating why she is grateful can be a little harder. We support her in articulating this and by letting her go first to encourage her own thinking.
Here and now
What I love most about gratitude, is that we can use it anytime. It is great for bringing us back to now and focusing on what’s working, what we have, and most often, the people that make a difference in our lives.
We hope you enjoy your new practice. As with anything, the more our kids see us do it and talk about it, the more likely they are to do it too.
[1] Greater Good Science Center., The Science of Gratitude: A white paper prepared for the John Templeton Foundation by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, May 2018.
[2] Emmons & Mishra (2011) “Why gratitude enhances well-being: What we know, what we need to know.”