Ep #53: Helping Kids Develop the Habit of Gratitude

We tell our kids to say thank you but is that enough to really teach them gratitude and help them harness the power of gratitude in their lives? Today I’m going to share a little bit with you from an article that was put out by Harvard about teaching children gratitude, what more is there to gratitude. And then the four steps to really help children develop a habit and practice of gratitude. And we have a really fun freebie for you that I think your kids are going to love. So come and listen to this episode with me, it’s coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.

Hello my friends. I am so excited about our topic today because it is gratitude. And I feel like gratitude is such a game changing life skill and something that all of us can start from wherever we’re at and improve it. And it’s something so critical to teach children the practice of gratitude, the how to do it and to do it well because it can change their lives for the rest of their lives.

I’ve been reading a really fascinating book lately. It’s been talking a lot about focus and the importance of focus and how our focus really literally changes our decisions and what we bring into our lives. And so when we help our children focus on gratitude, we’re directing, or when we teach them a practice of gratitude, we’re helping them focus on the good things in their lives, the good people in their lives, all of the good in their lives. And so it doesn’t mean that the other stuff isn’t there. And that’s part of our experience too and it’s what helps us to feel so grateful I think sometimes when we have that contrast.

But allowing them to and helping them practice so that they can focus and shift their focus to gratitude, really just sets them up to feel the positive side of life and to be able to experience even more positive things. So I was reading an article this week that was put out by Harvard about helping children develop gratitude. And they talk about how it’s so much more than saying thank you. So when we have these little, little kids and we’re like, “Hey, you need to say thank you. Did you say thank you to Grandma? Did you say thank you to the neighbor or friend”, whatever?

But gratitude is so much more than those two words. And are we taking the time to really help them develop a practice of gratitude and what that means? So gratitude is about noticing, it’s about a practice of noticing. Who are we grateful to? What are we grateful for? We want to go more in depth. Instead of just saying thank you, how do we extend that? We want to think about why we’re grateful and feeling positive about that full experience. If kids feel gratitude is just saying thank you, when we gave them something, that’s really limiting of what gratitude is.

What we really want to teach kids is how to notice on their own, to notice the good things coming into life, to notice the people, to notice what, to notice the why they’re grateful. And we want them to think about those things because that shifts, of course, their focus to those things and paying attention to those things, which allows them to bring more of that into their life.

So in this article from Harvard and I will link it for you below if you want to read more in depth what they share, they give four steps for helping kids learn how to notice and think more about the people and things they’re grateful for. So let’s talk about the four steps really quick. One of them is to practice looking. So we want to encourage kids to practice looking, practice paying attention to what they’re grateful for.

We have an amazing Gratitude Game that I love for this that you can get. It’s a freebie on our site and we’ll link that for you. It’s such a fun game, you use it with Skittles. So it’s a great game for kids. It’s a fun thing to do on Thanksgiving morning or do in a classroom or whatever you want to do. And what I love about this is that it’s this cute little card, has a fun little turkey and it’s the I’m thankful Skittles game. And then for each color in the Skittles bag, each color of Skittles, they get to think of something they’re thankful for in a different category.

So if they get a purple Skittle, they get to think of a person that they’re grateful for. If they get a yellow skittle, they get to think of a place that they’re grateful for. A green Skittle is a thing that they’re grateful for so maybe a toy or a book. The red Skittle is an event that they’re grateful for. What’s a fun event that they love, that’s something they can be grateful for? And then the orange one, you guys, I kind of love this one, something about myself. What is something about myself that I’m grateful for?

So I love this because it helps them focus on different things, different categories. They have to kind of pay attention, but also there’s Skittles and fun colors and it’s really fun and it’s a game. So we’ve had this out for a couple of years, but it’s amazing. It was so fun to see this article that came out from Harvard that kind of talks about that similar practice and how important it is.

Step two, we want to think about the why. So I think when we just kind of say thank you or thank you to grandma, but let’s go deeper. I’m grateful for something. Why? Let’s add on. Let’s not just stop at I’m thankful for peaches. I’m thankful for peaches because they’re delicious or they’re my favorite thing to put on my cereal or whatever. Add on, why are you thankful for that thing? I am so thankful for my toy because I can snuggle with it at night and it helps me feel less alone.

I think this just adds to the gratitude piece. It makes it deeper. I think it goes deeper in their soul. It just sticks out more and it helps them recognize why they’re grateful for that thing, which I think makes them better at identifying more things they’re grateful for. They feel that gratitude, I think even deeper, which is such a beautiful feeling and helps counter so many other kinds of feelings. I think gratitude counters anxiety and fear and all of a lot of these emotions that we don’t like to spend time in as much. Gratitude is an opposite of those things, it helps those go away and helps counter those which is so powerful.

Step three is, share your gratitude. And I love this one because being able to talk about it, being able to share it somehow I think makes it more real. I think it makes it more permanent. And it’s just beautiful to be able to share that feeling. We’re trying to encourage kids to share feelings anyway. We want them to name them. We want them to talk about them, tell us if you’re sad or if you’re happy or whatever. But if we’re wanting to really help them direct focus towards gratitude, then having them talk about it and be able to share it is really important.

I think it increases the feeling inside of them, but I think it also feels good because you’re giving gratitude almost as a gift to someone else. You’re sharing or gifting gratitude outside of yourself. And I think something about that is really beautiful because it’s just a gift that you’re giving out. And it’s just this beautiful cycle of things being given to you in your life, whether it’s by a person or nature or whatever. And recognizing that and feeling gratitude for it and then gifting out that gratitude to kind of spread it into the world. And it has this ripple impact and it’s amazing.

And I think, have you ever just hung out with someone who’s grateful and you just love spending time with that person? Because they’re just so grateful and it’s positive and it’s beautiful and it’s amazing. It lifts your energy level to hang out with grateful people. So sharing gratitude can help children in their future socially and help them feel even better and more connected to other humans right now. Just really beautiful.

We’re on to the fourth one, fourth and final. We’re keeping this episode short today, short and packed with powerful stuff. So number four is, make it a habit. We want to do this all the time, we really, in order to really strengthen that change of focus, that pathway in our brain. That instead of maybe going to our caveman brain, that kind of tends to go negative because we’re fight or flight trying to protect ourselves from saber tooth tigers that aren’t really a problem anymore.

So we’re trying to get out of that natural state that our brain has kind of developed to be. And we want to kind of change it so our focus is more positive and gratitude focused but that takes time. We have to program those pathways in our brain and that’s done through repetition. So we do that by creating habits. So we’re going to do it over and over again. I have a couple of suggestions for this one.

One of the things I really recommend is just finding a time that you can do it. So when I was a child, sometimes my mom would have a set night, she would come and pray with us and have us try to pray at night. And she would pull out her little hand and close her fist. So if you get your hand and close a fist and then what she would do is she would have us sit on her lap or sit next to her and we would get to pull up one finger at a time. And for each finger we would pull up and pry up, we would say one thing we were grateful for.

And again I would add on to this and have them say what they’re grateful for and then why. And maybe have them come up with different categories if you want to. You can play with it and see what you like. So she would do this at night. So we would say five things we were grateful for, when we could just pull up one finger at a time. Everyone wanted their turn because mom time was really precious. There were 12 kids in my family and my cute mom. If you could get time with mom that was amazing.

And she worked so hard to make time for us, it was fantastic. So that was something I did growing up and she would do that a lot at night, and it didn’t happen every night. I’m going to tell you that right now. But because she did it enough, there was enough consistency that it became a thing. And that was something that we thought of often. And it was just really part of her character too. And so that was something that we learned to make part of our character because she modeled that for us so much.

With my kids, I don’t do this every night. I’m going to be honest, I don’t do this every night. But I do have a way that I do it. So I try to do gratitude weekly with my kids and I mean we do gratitude all the time. We do it regularly in carpool and all the things. But when we do our little fist thing, because I do this with my children too because I love it so much and they have so much fun. And then they like to be silly and steal my favorite things that I’m grateful for because they make me do it back.

My kids will then put out their fist and they’ll be like, “Hey, mom, your turn.” And I get to do my five grateful things back. And we tease and they try to steal my favorite thing or the things I’m the most grateful for. And then we tease and I’m like, “You can’t have mine.” And take my finger back. And then they’ve tried to pry it back up again. It’s this fun game. You guys try it. It’s amazing. But when I do this I do this actually on Sundays. So I take my kids with me to church. And when we’re sitting there and we have a little bit of a break for a minute and nothing’s happening, this is my time that I’ve made work for it.

So find a time that works for you. I’m telling you this not because you need to do this at church or you have to pray with your kids at night. You can do this if you’re religious, if you’re non-religious. Whatever your belief system is there’s always room for gratitude. So find a time that works for you. I’ve done mine at church. My mom did it at night when she would come in and put us to bed and pray with us. You can do it however you want but find a time to record gratitude.

There’s gratitude prompts you can do in journals and things like that. But I think especially with younger children, finding ways to engage with them and do it with them is so powerful because kids learn so much more from what we do than what we say. And so if you can model it for them and do that with any kind of consistency, it becomes a habit. It becomes a pattern, it becomes a lifestyle and a life choice. That’s just how their brain works and that’s so, so powerful.

So I’m going to encourage you this week to give your kids the gift of a gratitude perspective, a gratitude habit, the way that they live their lives full of gratitude. And we start that again by little habits. You can go ahead and go to Planning Playtime. We’ll drop the link down here for you to get the, I’m thankful Skittles game, the Gratitude Game that’s super fun and get you started. And then find a way to incorporate this into a regular habit. How can you do that? What could that look like for you? It will pay massive, massive dividends.

And I have to tell you guys, I actually got the sweetest note right before I got on to record this podcast from one of my teenagers. And it was a gratitude note, just random Friday afternoon gratitude note that nearly made me cry. It was beautiful. And I think that one of the reasons that I got that note today was because I’ve tried to incorporate a practice of gratitude throughout my children’s lives imperfectly. Can we just put that out there, this has not been perfect. But I have tried to do it with some consistency and certainly have that be a part of their lives.

You are amazing. Thank you for coming and hanging out with me today on this podcast. If you are in the US and enjoying Thanksgiving, I hope you have the most amazing Thanksgiving. If you’re listening to this at a different time, every day can be a day of gratitude. And every day I think is better with some gratitude in it. So wherever you are and whatever day you’re listening, I hope that there’s some gratitude with you in your life today and that it’s bringing you at least a little bit of joy in with all the other things we get to feel. Stay amazing and I will catch up with you next week here on the podcast.

Don’t you just love all the fun things we’re learning on the show together? Well, we wanted to give you a chance to practice a little bit of it at home. And so we made you a special freebie just for being a listener here and you can grab it at planningplaytime.com\special-freebie. That is planningplaytime.com\special-freebie. So what this freebie is, I’ll tell you, is an amazing alphabet activity that you can start using with your kiddos and it is based in play and is so fun.

You can use dot markers with it, you can use Q-tip painting, you could use circle cereal. There’s all kinds of options, but you can print it out today and get started. Just head over to planningplaytime.com\special-freebie and we’ll send that to you right away.

Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website planningplaytime.com. See you next week.