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This is a prefect time of year to teach our children about being thankful.
The Thanksgiving holiday will be quickly followed by Christmas. Both holidays bring many opportunities to create new family traditions that will bring the real meaning of thankfulness and gratitude to a personal level for our children.
Even in the mist of extremely challenging circumstances, we can find something to be thankful for. In addition to helping us cope with challenges, this kind of grateful attitude can be contagious and is a wonderful life lesson to share with our children.
Learning to be truly grateful can change your life.
Helping our children recognize and show appreciation for things they have learned to take for grated can take some time. Kids are never too young to start learning how to see and show thanks for the good things in their lives. Although Thanksgiving, by its name alone, makes us think about giving thanks we should teach our children — by example — that being thankful and telling others how much they are appreciated should happen everyday.
Richard and Linda DoBroka write in their book, Teaching Children Values: “Parents teach their kids to say ‘thank you’ as a matter of politeness. They don’t teach them to mean it. True gratitude is demonstrated by showing appreciation and starting by saying ‘thank you’ can go a long way.”
Teaching children to be thankful helps them resist their natural urge to be self-centered and self-absorbed. With your help, children can be guided to consider other people and their needs as well as their own.
The DoBrokas write: “Thankfulness is an important character trait that allows young people to develop meaningful relationships with others. It is important for children to appreciate the good in their lives. Thankfulness is directly related happiness.”
Understanding the good things in our lives will go a long way during adversity.
You, the parent or custodian, are the main ingredient in teaching you children no matter how young or old about being grateful. We teach with our actions more than words. So it will take some thoughtful planning to find time around our busy work schedules but many things can be incorporated in our day-to-day lives with very little effort.
Here are some ideas to try with your family:
•A Thanksgiving Tree: Get each child to trace their hand on a piece of paper. Have each child write various things they are thankful for on the fingers.
•The Thankful Paper Chain: Cut strips of paper. On each strip have the child write about something they are thankful for, such as "Grandma plays games with me" or "I have a nice teacher." Correct them into loops. It would be fun to add to the chain as Christmas approaches using green and red paper.
•Giving Thanks Place Mats: The goal of this craft is to create a collage filled with pictures of all the things your children are grateful for. Using magazine pictures or pictures from the computer, glue them on a place mat-size piece of paper. Older children could write captions. You can even laminate it so you can use it again and again.
•A Thank You Note Project: Teach your children to write thank you notes for presents they receive or kindnesses that are shown to them. An article in a recent Dear Abby column suggested giving special "thank you" cards in our children Christmas stockings so they would understand the relationship of receiving presents and thanking those who were responsible for the giving.
•The Alphabet Project: Make 26 blocks on a piece of paper with a letter of the alphabet in each. In each block write something that your child is thankful for that corresponds with that letter, such as: T = toys.
•A Family Community Project: There are so many local agencies that need our help to provide a good holiday for those that are not as fortunate as we may be. There are adopt-a-family projects available. Hold a family meeting and identify a community need. When my children were young, we helped pack the food boxes at our local agency and even served at a soup kitchen in Cincinnati as a Girl Scout activity. It is something they have never forgotten, and neither have I.
Melody Beattie said, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Green is an Extension Educator for Family & Consumer Sciences at Ohio State University Extension Clark County
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