Collaborative post. Exploring gratitude with your child has many benefits. It can help them to feel more content, better connected with others and have a sense of belonging. It can help to improve their mental wellbeing, positively affect school attainment while also ensuring that children grow up to be respectful. I’ve teamed up with a senior school in Hampshire to share a few ways that you can go about exploring gratitude with your child.
Exploring Gratitude with Your Child
Why It’s Better to Give
It’s nice to be on the receiving end of something thoughtful and heartfelt. It’s even better to be the one bringing a smile to someone’s face. Teaching your child this can help them to strengthen their relationships with others and understand the importance of being kind.
Get Them Involved in Charity Work
Charity work can open your child’s eyes to all the struggles that others face. It can educate them on real-life issues such as inequality. This might involve taking part in a fundraiser or donating old toys to a children’s home. This can help them to appreciate what they have and acknowledge the things that they otherwise wouldn’t think about like having a roof over their head. Understanding this can help them to be more generous and empathetic towards others too.
Saying Thank You
The end of the school year is a good time for reflection. It’s important to get your child to think about everyone that has helped them throughout the academic year. That could be a teacher, mentor or friend. Get them to take this moment to think about how they can express their gratitude. This might be to make a small gift or a thank you card. This act of acknowledgement and appreciation can help them to develop stronger bonds too.
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Role Model Gratitude
Our behaviour says a lot to our children which is why we must try to emulate the behaviour that we want to see in them. Stopping to take a moment to thank those around you, whether it be the postman or your partner, can help your child to pick up on these habits too. Encourage them to do the same when the opportunities arise.
Gratitude Rituals
A daily ritual where your child thinks about the things and people that they are grateful for in their life can help to do this too. This could be done as a mindfulness exercise before bed that’s paired up with a breathing technique to help them with their mental health.
Exploring gratitude with your child is important and helps children become better people. Which of the lessons mentioned here did you like the most? Were there any that you would like to add?
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These are some great tips. Sometimes I feel like my children aren’t grateful even though I think I model gratitude every day so I will use these tips
I like this article. We so need to teach kids about being thankful.
These sound like some great ways to explore gratitude with a child – they really do learn from their parents and you need to talk to them about so many different ways to be grateful.
This is so important to do. I always remind my kids it’s important to be grateful for what they do have and to give back.
That’s always good to hear. It helps with their personal growth so much.
My daughters were always so polite to strangers when they were children when I taught them how and when to say “Thank you!” They used to say thank you to the garagemen also. Thanks for sharing!
That’s great to hear. It really does make a difference when we teach them well.
So many great tips! Love this! Thank you for the great reminders!
Great tips on exploring gratitude with your child! As a mom of 5, I feel this is very important.
Attitude of gratitude goes a long way. More so for the all round growth of children.
This is so important to teach from a young age to ensure they interact with people in the right way, and saying thank you is so important x
I completely agree. The more of us that do it the better.
This is such an important focus to have with children and I love all the ways there are to help it happen.
It certainly is. We all need to do something like this with our little ones to make them better people.
Gratitude is such an important area we can teach our children, I was always taught to treat others like you would like to be treated yourself, so being kind and being thankful, helping others etc. Which I instilled in my kids and even now they are grown up will quickly pull them up on it
I think sometimes people need a reminder. The world has changed so much and not all appreciate what they have.
Love this. We have a daily gratitude practice round the dinner table every evening. So good for their emotional and mental wellbeing.
That’s so lovely, it does make us all think about what we actually have and hopefully appreciate these things more.
I loooove the idea of practicing gratitude with the kids, I can’t agree more, can’t agree more…Amazing…
Thanks Chad. Some children really do need to learn to appreciate what they have whether it’s items or people.
Modelling is the best way to teach gratitude to kids. Show them and they will follow
teaching the kids the value of saying thank you is real important. When kids appreciate what they have and thank the anyone who help them, they grow up happily
I couldn’t agree more. It is important as part of good parenting to work on these things.
Thank you so much for this post. It’s so important to teach our children to help and take care of others. Teaching our children to have gratitude for their lives is important.
I really do agree Tammy. Thanks for reading x
My grandmother instilled gratitude into me. She was always saying, I’m so grateful for you! I am so grateful for the sunny day. All day long. It was kind of like a prayer.
It’s great that she did that I am sure it made her a happier person as it makes you have a more positive outlook.
This is so important to do! I will make sure to teach my kid to do all of these! I really enjoy reading this post!
Thanks Richelle. I will make them better and happier people x
This is a really great and very important post! We need to teach our kids these really important lessons !
I’m so glad you agree. It will affect what they are like as adults so much.
Gratitude and good manners are so important to teach at a young age. Love this post!
Thanks Catherine, they really are. It’s a shame not all do this.
Having Gratitude is so important, thanks for sharing these tips.
It is good to teach children to practice gratitude when they are young. It is a good habit for adulthood.
It is good to start teaching kids about gratitude starting at a young age. I think a lot of people need a reminder about being thankful for what they have.
Gratitude is fundamental to so many good traits and habits. Great reminder to make it a focus
It is important!!! We do need to work on it sometimes.
Something that I want my child to have is the law of gratitude.
This is such a great article! I would add to the gratitude ritual, to ask your child to write one thing they are thankful for at the end of each day.
It really is important to instill gratitude in our children. It’s an ugly thing to be lacking, and that gets more apparent as they age (teacher in the house). 🙂
Gratitude is really important. We do big clean outs of items we don’t use and talk about donating them with the children. It’s so important to make sure they understand gratefulness.
It is smart to start teaching keds about gratitude and giving back at a very young age.
Having your child understand graititude is so important at a young age. It helps them to understand the concept of being thankful as well as showing kindness.
My girls are always grateful for what they have and I have tried to instil that into them from an early age that everything we have is a blessing
Great topic. We do try to talk to our kids about this as well and it’s something that we’re working on.