Gratitude can change your child’s life and it is a life-long positive quality that you can equip your children with. It helps your child to become happier, healthier, develop a positive life perspective, combats depression, and positions your child for better school success. The following list are some ideas to help cultivate gratitude in your home:
1. Keep a gratitude list or journal for both material and non-material things – Help your child keep a gratitude list where he or she writes down a few things that he is grateful for. While there are material things to be grateful for such as food, water, clothing, shelter, school, there are also non-material things to be grateful for such as love, family, kindness, time, each day, learning, experiences, greater purpose, and many more.
2. Express your gratitude for your child – What are your child’s positive qualities? Express affirmation and gratitude for your child’s positive qualities. Recognize small things that he or she has accomplished. Tell them that they are doing a good job.
3. Count your family’s blessings together – Spend a few minutes at dinner to count your blessings together as a family. What are the things you and your family is grateful for?
4. Being grateful for lessons learned from challenges and difficulties – Not only can you teach your child to be grateful for the fun, happy, nice experiences but also for the lessons learned from challenges and difficulties. It is good to teach our kids early on to view problems and difficulties as a means to learn and grow, which will help them for the future.
5. Keep a list of memories that your child is grateful for – Keeping a list of memories that your child is grateful for such as a photo album that you can go through together is helpfully. Together you can talk about those fun experiences and what the child appreciated about it.
6. Create more memories to be grateful for – As the years pass and as your child grows up, it will be these memories that your child will look back to. It can be simple things such as camping in your backyard, or walking together each day as a family, or a once a year travel.
7. Engage your child in charity and volunteering – charity and volunteering provide avenues for your child to develop positive perspectives in life. It provides your children with a greater purpose and the experience of being able to help others. It also boosts your child’s self esteem. For starters, you can do once-a-year Christmas volunteering or giving to those who are in need, your children can help with packing and handing out the gifts. This can also be a regular activity, such as a quarterly, monthly or even a weekly activity that the whole family can look forward to.
8. Let them play positive, educational apps that teach gratefulness – in today’s time, children spend their day playing with games and apps. Why not use this time for them to learn about gratefulness? There are many games that teach children positive virtues such as gratefulness, kindness, compassion. In Oville World, children interact with animated in-game characters that talk and give your child “kindness quests”.
