One thing I have struggled with over the past few years is how to teach my nine-year-old gratitude. He will often get upset over what he doesn’t have. We are very fortunate and I try to explain this to him but it’s hard for the nine year old mind to understand this perspective. I remember having a strong sense of gratitude at a young age. How did I learn gratitude? I can’t remember for sure but it must have been a combination of listening to my parent’s childhood stories and sitting at the dining room table at Aunt Mary’s house on Sundays. Every Sunday my aunts, great aunts, great uncles, and grandparents would gather around the dinner table eating macaroni and talk for hours. Maybe their stories of growing up in Manhattan and Brooklyn in tiny apartments instilled a sense of gratitude within me.
A few years ago, I started going around the dinner table stating one thing I was thankful for and asked anyone dining with us, including my son, to join in. This quickly turned into a silly way for my son to make fun of me and the activity. I dug a little deeper to find a solution. At the beginning of November, I decided to place a jar on the dinner table with a stack of colorful papers next to it. Each night I asked him to write something he was thankful for and to place it in the jar. He didn't have to share it, he only had to fold it and place it in the jar. I also wrote something each night. I haven’t looked through the jar, my thought was to pull out random papers from the jar on Thanksgiving and read them.
He quickly took a liking to the activity and became concerned on days he thought he might not be home to contribute to the jar. After seeing how concerned he was, I knew something was working. We both have respected the jar and left it as is, adding to it each night. On occasion, one or two of his notes have fallen in the jar open and I peaked to see what he wrote. One night it was about our dog that had to go back to the animal hospital because she tore out her stitches. Sometimes he will tell me what he wrote before he places it in the jar, for example, “I am thankful I am going to New York.” This one also fell open in the jar so I snapped a photo to share.
I’m counting this as a great step in teaching my son gratitude. How do you practice gratitude? How are you teaching it children?
