Intentional Thankful Activities

As parents we want our kids to be happy, to be healthy, to be loved and to love others. Being able to be thankful and have an attitude of gratitude is important for our kids to be those things. Research shows that those who are grateful are better at sleeping, better with self-control, and over all more patient. I’m not completely convinced that kids that have those traits aren’t also more inclined to be grateful, but I know I want to help my kids move towards thankfulness also so that they can be so in relationships with others and accept thankfulness from others.

Dr. Robert Emmons is a psychologist who studies gratitude. A definition of gratitude is : an affirmation of the goodness in one’s life and the recognition that the sources of this goodness lie at least partially outside the self. All kids can struggle with being thankful, but especially kids with trauma or that have a tough time connecting with others. It is hard to be grateful if you have a need to be self-reliant (you didn’t have someone to depend on), you have a negative outlook (things are always bad), you don’t feel worthy of generosity, you don’t want to feel indebted to someone, and/or you are suspicious of the gifter’s motives. This is why it is hard for kids from hard places, or biological kids that struggle with one or more of these feelings to be grateful in their everyday life. Our kids can learn to truly feel grateful. It starts with feeling safe and secure in where they are (this may take years), but also you can practice gratitude. You can practice really thinking about things that you are thankful for and why. You can start with physical things and then think about traits in yourself and then people that you are grateful for. Below is a silly Cootie Catcher that you can print out and play with your younger kids for them to start thinking of things they are grateful for and then there is a whole bunch of free printables below to help you have a great November of thankfulness.

Have your child pick one of the four words (ie. Thankful) and spell it out as you move the cootie catcher back and forth and then have them pick a number. Move the catcher that many times and have them pick another number. Then open that number and read it. You and your child will then talk about something that they are grateful for in that category. Please also have them talk about why they are grateful for that thing/person. Being specific is helpful to building your grateful muscles.

Parenting UnTips for pursuing gratitude with your family

Above there are lots and lots of activities you can do with your kids. You may want to do everything, but pick one or just a couple of these activites to help your child become more mindful of what it means to be grateful and how they can notice when to be grateful. Doing too many might make it not a fun activity, and the goal is for this to be fun, for this to be something they want to do, for this to become part of daily life and who they are. It is great if you can take this month to be grateful to them and encourage them to be grateful to each other. Research shows that truly being specific about what you are grateful for is the key to it affecting you. So even though the Scavenger hunt, will be super duper fun, having your kid pick one of the items to talk about in detail will be even more beneficial. Really being specific about what about someone or something makes you feel thankful is what creates awareness in the child. Encourage them to say five things or characteristics or events about one thing or person that they are grateful for. (silly example. I know my son will pick sharks, he is obsessed with them. But I will encourage him to tell me why he likes them, what makes him happy when he thinks about them, what he admires about them, and then I might add that I am now thankful for sharks because they have given us opportunities to read together and tell silly stories together and pretend together.) Really keep asking .. and what else. As with all activities on ConnectionKeeping.com remember the importance of joy during the activity. If you are finding that you or they are getting frustrated, bored, or annoyed then it’s not the activity for you. Maybe you need a less serious activity or one that has a component that they love like the creativity of card writing or kinestic input of the scavenger hunt. Maybe it needs to be a quick tradition like the gratitude jar or if you have a child whose love language is gifts or time together do the grateful journaling and get them a journal and spend quiet time together just you and them with it each night. Be encouraging and easy going. If a child doesn’t want to write in it you can say do you want me to draw a picture of what you are thankful for, or say you’ll write it. Remember to keep the connection. The first step in learning to be thankful is truly feeling valued and safe. If you would like to read more of our parenting untips to keep in mind while doing connecting keeping activities you can check it out here. Parenting untips