How To Raise A Grateful Child
Because the festive season can bring out the best in children - and the worst. Here’s how to raise your kids to be thankful for what they have in life - and much happier
With Christmas and Chinese New Year ahead, now is the prime time to teach your children about gratitude. Children love getting gifts and hong bao red packets filled with money. But it can be embarrassing if your kids are dismissive about their gifts, or do not seem grateful for all the blessings they receive in life. And when you’ve made a special effort to get them to a sports event or concert, it’s crushing if they just brush it off.
Teaching your children does more than stop them turning into spoiled brats. It actually helps improve their happiness and mental health. Countless psychological studies show gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, and enjoy the good experiences in their lives - even the small treats like a homemade cookie.
Gratitude is like a battery giving you the power to keep on going through tough times. It your child more resilience so they can deal with setbacks in life. Gratitude also helps your kids build strong and supportive relationships and better mental health.
But gratitude is not always a natural emotion. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the negative things in life and forget to be grateful for all the little pleasures we experience. We all need to be taught to recognise good things in our lives and feel gratitude about them. Here’s how to do it with your kids, so they have happier lives, whatever setbacks they face.
Psychologist Prof Andrea Hussong is Director for Developmental Science at the University of North Carolina. She runs a project called “Raising Grateful Children”, where she studies children aged six to nine years old, and their family. The children and their parents meet with the researchers several times a year to discuss their lives. The goal is to find out what parenting methods work when it comes to raising well-adjusted, resilient and grateful children. Here’s what she’s identified.
Children learn by watching their parents. So if you want your children to be thankful for what they have, one good strategy is to show them what you are thankful for in life – including non-financial things like good weather or a coffee catchup with a friend.
Life is full of little opportunities to be grateful. Your children will be happier and more resilient if they can notice them. So show them how you treasure the moments of joy in your life. From a nice family dinner to your pride in their achievements. Shared memories are a powerful way to develop gratitude
Proof Andrea also noticed that parents who cultivate gratitude in their children also thought about where they hung out. Did those places encourage them to develop a grateful mindset? They chose positive environments for their children. That encouraged gratitude. These ranged from formal situations like after-school and enrichment programmes, to causal situations, like playdates with friends.
The parents also asked their kids about what went well at the events, and what they are thankful for.
Shared memories are a powerful way to develop gratitude. So talk with your children about “gifts of gratitude” – times when good things happen. Also talk about tough times that they got through, and ask what they learned from that experience. Sometimes we learn more from tough times. We feel stronger afterwards, and we’re grateful for that.
This concept can be difficult for children to learn so they may not be immediately “grateful” for a romantic heartbreak, or a missed opportunity to join the sports team. But in time, with your guidance, they can become grateful for the lessons they learned from that tough time.
Developing gratitude is like any emotional skill – it takes practice, reflection and time to develop. So keep repeating these steps until your child naturally starts to feel gratitude for the big and little things in life they have going for them.
Text: Bauer Syndication/ ARE Media