Creating Grateful Hearts

Thanksgiving season is the perfect time to start creating an "attitude of gratitude" in our families.  Usually Thanksgiving Day is our catalyst to show gratitude to God for all He has given throughout the year, but I hope to stretch your thoughts on the importance and the just plain goodness of developing hearts that are grateful everyday...and not just in our children!  We need to shift our focus.  So often being grateful has more to do with "seeing" rather than being a recipient of some gift or service.  In this post I would like to give you a few ideas to help you and your family see with grateful eyes.  Peter, Chris, Kathy and I LOVE practical applications to parenting principals that create happy, healthy, and, in this case, grateful families, so toward the end, I will share some ideas to help you with this task.  But before we begin, I would like to share with you the results of study I found interesting from the book, Thanks!  How the Attitude of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, by Dr. Robert Emmons.

Six Reasons Why it is Important to Create Gratitude in Our Children

1.  It creates better attitudes:  Children who practice grateful thinking have more positive attitudes toward school and their families.

2.  It Helps Our Children Achieve Personal Goals:  Participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal, and health-based) over a two-month period.

3.  It Creates Closer Relationships and Greater Happiness:  Professor Froh (one of Dr. Emmons colleagues) infused middle school classes with a small dose of a gratitude awareness through a guided exercise each day and found that it made students feel more connected to their friends, family and their school.  "By the follow-up three weeks later, students who had been instructed to count their blessings showed more gratitude in general; it was also related to feeling better about life and school.  Indeed, compared with students in the control groups, students who counted their blessings reported better satisfaction with school both immediately after the two-week exercise and at the three-week follow-up"

4.  It Results in Better Grades:  Sixth to seventh graders who kept a gratitude journal for only three weeks, had an increased grade point average over a year.

5.  It Creates Better Energy, Attentiveness and Enthusiasm:  A daily intervention of gratitude (through self-guided exercises) with young adults, resulted in higher reported levels of positive states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy.

6.  It Creates Better Sensitivity: Children who kept gratitude journals were more sensitive to situations where they themselves could be helpful, generous, and compassionate and were less destructive.

On the other hand, research shows that those who are ungrateful are "less satisfied with their lives and are more apt to be aggressive and engage in risk-taking behaviors, such as early and frequent promiscuous activities, substance abuse, poor eating habits, physical inactivity, and poor academics."


I have to say, from this research it sounds as if an "attitude of gratitude" could cure the common cold:)  The truth is gratitude makes us feel great, it creates in us an "others focus" and then motivates us to want to do good ourselves.  I love one particular part in Dr. Emmons book when he makes a very profound point.  He says gratitude is the one human feeling that is completely focused on others.  You can be pleased, angry, proud and even love yourself, but you never hear anyone say how grateful they are to themselves.  Even when treating yourself to something wonderful, it would be downright weird and bizarre to thank yourself:)  "Gratitude is always delivered outward to the giver of gifts."

Pondering all of this caused me to realize how important it is to not only begin creating grateful hearts in all members of the family this Thanksgiving, but to keep it all year...all of our lives.  It is good for us...relationally, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and evidently, even good for our physical health.  On so many levels, gratitude is one of the easiest ways to change our lives in a very positive way.  So let me give you just a few practical ideas to begin adding a little gratitude to our everyday lives.

1.  One idea I found was to create a "garden of gratitude" with flower-shaped sticky notes.  Each time you think of something or someone to be thankful for, you write it on a sticky note and put it on a window.  Kids LOVE watching their garden "grow" and will be looking for "thankful" things to "grow" in their garden of gratitude.  Like I said, we are all about the practical, so here is a link to Amazon for flower sticky notes: http://www.amazon.com/Post--Sticky-Shapes-2-Count-7350-FLR/dp/B002LNBE2M/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1351132726&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=tulip+sticky+notes

2.  Another great idea, especially for older children, is to have a family gratitude journal.  Leave a blank, spiral-bound journal out in a prominent place such as the dining room, kitchen or living room coffee table with a couple of colorful pens.  Throughout the week family members are encouraged to write in the journal what they are thankful for.  Every couple weeks bring the journal to the table and talk over the blessings that have come in the past weeks.   Involvement of mom and dad in this exercise is particularly important.  When older kids see their parents writing in the journal, they are much more likely to participate.  It is fun to invite those who visit your home to write something they are grateful for in your journal as well.  Peter and I started a gratitude journal even though we have no children at home anymore.  The first entry for me:  "I am GRATEFUL I passed an 'in home osteoporosis test' given by Ben and Livvie (my two Australian Shepherd dogs).  I can still land on my bum from four feet in the air and not break a hip!" No broken bones, but as Peter says..."That's going to leave a bruise." :)  It did.

3.  Leave out a basket of thank you notes, pens and stamps and encourage your children to write out short notes of appreciation to others who have blessed them. Many times we truly have the right heart to show gratitude to others, but lose the thought after a few days.  When the all that is necessary to show thanks is readily available, it is much more likely to get done.  


There is one final practical, fun Thanksgiving idea I would like to share with you.  Most turkeys during the Thanksgiving season are not very thankful, but I want to introduce you to one very grateful turkey....

This is a fun project you can start at the beginning of the Thanksgiving season.  What you need is some card stock, colorful feathers, crayons or markers and your hands.  Everyone in the family traces their hand on a piece of card stock and creates a naked;) turkey from their hand.  Give each family member a baggy full of colorful feathers and explain that throughout the next few weeks their job is to look for ways to bless other family members.  When they do something for a brother, sister, mom or dad, they leave a feather behind. You might need to help little ones think of ways to serve and bless.  It doesn't have to be "big" things.  It can be doing a chore for a busy sibling, bringing dad his coffee in the morning, helping mom with dishes, even giving preference...letting a sibling have the first or the biggest.  It is ANYTHING that says "I thought of you."  In the evening the family gathers to tell how they had been blessed during the day and glue their feathers onto their turkey.  By Thanksgiving Day they should have a pretty awesome looking turkey that will remind them of all they have to be grateful for.  It occurred to me that you could turn these delightful and colorful little guys into a Thanksgiving meal place card.

Just put your name along the bottom of the card instead of the side like I did.  

One last thought before I close this post down...Pray for your family.  Pray specifically that they would have grateful hearts toward others but even more importantly, toward Him who is the Great Giver of Every Good and Perfect Gift.  Ask Him to remind you to be grateful throughout your day...everyday.  Tell Him how much you want yourself and your family to be a light of gratitude in this world.  Believe me these are prayers He LOVES to answer:)  


The more we practice seeing through grateful eyes, the more gratitude will become part of the personality of our families. 

Please feel free to send pictures and your "Thanksgiving stories" to parenting@desertvineyard.org.  We would love to hear from you!

With love and gratitude:)

Cherri...Peter, Chris and Kathy, too!
 

The Importance of Teaching Manners

Imagine this:  You and your husband have finally reached the milestone of twenty-five years of marriage and your husband, being the sweet guy he is, has planned a lovely dinner at an upscale restaurant.  Everything is perfect...you have a new dress and your man is looking better than ever.  All week long you have looked forward to this evening.  You arrive at the restaurant and are shown your lovely table overlooking the ocean and you begin a memorable night.  Shortly after you sit down, a family of four is shown to their seats and you smile politely as the young family gets settled in.  However, it doesn't take long to realize the night will be memorable, but not in the way you had ever imagined.  The children, who look to be around seven to ten years old, begin the night by bickering...glasses are knocked to the ground and broken and water douses your purse.  You rush to rescue the contents of your bag while parents jockey positions at the table to cease the destruction.  As the evening wears on and I mean W-E-A-R-S on, the children whine and complain about the food, are rude, loud and obnoxious to not only their parents, but to the servers as well; and, above it all, are the voices of desperate, pleading parents demanding, bribing, and, in the end, begging their children to behave.  When finally this family walks out the door, the entire restaurant--patrons and staff--heave a collective sigh of relief.  Yes, indeed, the night was memorable.

Let me give you the "flip-side" to this experience...I was struggling one day to set-up a parenting event at our church when two voices behind me said:  "Mrs. Thompson, do you need help?"  In that moment, my heart was warmed by the sensitivity and concern my sweet little friends, Betty and Peter, had toward me.  These two, as wonderful as they are, where not born this way.  You can bet their parents, Jenny and Wes, have spent a lot of time teaching these two dear ones to value others...to look for opportunities to be polite and sensitive.  And here's our job as adults in these children's lives, when you have a situation come up such as this, make sure you have something they can do for you.  Let  them bless you...Let them serve you...Let them practice this important life skill of giving value to others.

Here is the "thing" about manners---they give value to others.   Manners are simply the practical way we have to show people in our lives or who are following behind we believe they have value.  Think about it...aren't all manners basically "others focused"?  When you teach a child to honor the elderly by giving up their seat or their place in line, you teach that the elderly have value.  When you teach children to clean up their own messes, you are teaching that those who come after you have value.  When you teach your children table manners and how to behave when dining out, you are teaching that those who are dining out around you and the servers who are serving you have value.  When you teach your children to communicate with others by looking at them and giving a polite response, you are teaching them that people are worthy of their attention which gives value to the one they are speaking to.

Manners are probably one of the best tools we have to teach our children to get their eyes off themselves and onto others.  The beauty of teaching manners is that it can be a daily routine.  Good manners are used EVERYDAY and EVERYWHERE, including and especially in the home.  We are fortunate to have some wonderful books to help with teaching manners because here is the sobering truth:  Somewhere along the way, something that had been taught for ages, got dropped from the "parenting to do list."  I am sure there are historians who have entire papers and probably even books to explain the "why" and "how" of this phenomenon, but for our purposes here, it doesn't really matter.  What does matter is that we, as parents, take seriously the charge to bring back to our families this very important aspect of parenting.  For many of us it doesn't come naturally, and I am speaking for myself here, but fortunately, we have wonderful resources to give us guidance as we learn manners along with our children.  Here are two of my favorites:



 

Both these books have wonderful, interactive and fun ways to teach manners to young children.  


 Before I end this post, I have to share with you a cute scene from the movie Blast From the Past.  The plot line of the story is that a family in the early 60s, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, because of a nearby plane crash, believes the worst has happened, so they retreat to their bomb shelter where they stay for thirty years until their food runs out.  They send their grown son (Brendan Fraser) out to forage for food in what they believe is a post-nuclear disaster world.    Of course, what their son finds is a modern world and culture that is far from what he has been taught by his parents for the past thirty years, and he is so thoughtful, mannerly and kind the people around him think he is just bizarre or crazy.  So I close with this clip from the movie....