We like to think that we are pretty thankful people, but sometimes we’re simply going through the motions.
And our kids? As a teacher, I’ve seen the blank stares when kids have been asked to list what they’re thankful for. And then when they finally drum up an answer, it’s often the same one they give every Thanksgiving.
My house. My bed. My family.
Or for the more “spiritual” responses: Jesus. My salvation.
Not that there’s anything wrong with theses answers. But too often there’s no true thanksgiving behind the response. More a “I had to say something so that’s the first thing I could think of.”
How Can We Help Our Kids Be Truly Thankful?
I’ll be honest – my kiddo is only one, so I don’t have much experience helping kids learn to be more thankful. I mean, I think he might be pretty thankful for grandma’s dog (at least he gets pretty excited when he sees him), but he also gets pretty upset when he doesn’t get what he wants, so I’m not so sure how much he’s really into the true thanksgiving spirit.
Anyhow, I don’t have enough experience to tell you how to help your kids truly be thankful, but I do have one thought.
How can we help our kids be thankful if we aren’t truly thankful ourselves?
And there’s one big obstacle to our own thanksgiving (one that our kids probably struggle with even more than us): thinking that we deserve what we have.
My guest post entitled How to Be Truly Thankful This Thanksgiving appears on FaithWalkers this week. In it, I discuss how easy it is to start thinking that we deserve what we have, and how much more meaningful our thanksgiving is when we root those thoughts out of our hearts.
Check out the post now here: How to Be Truly Thankful This Thanksgiving
And for those of you experience parents (or teachers who have had success in this area), I’d love an answer to that question…..How do you help your kids be truly thankful? Share your advice and experience with a comment below.
Photo by boeke
I don’t know that it can be proven effective, but I create a Thanksgiving chain each Thanksgiving with my students. Each child writes what they’re thankful for on one link, then we join them together to create a chain. I keep the chain up for several weeks and it decorates our room, as well as serving as a reminder of our thankfulness. It’s a very easy, simple way to practice thankfulness.
Love this idea! I think my teachers may have even done this with us when I was in school 🙂
We can take it one step further by asking the kids to imagine what their life would be like without whatever they wrote.