Gratitude

I’m excited to announce that my essay “Landing Gratitude” posted today on The Power of Mom’s website. Click here to check out the essay. I share a personal experience and 2 ways families can practice gratitude with their kids.  I hope you’ll read it.

The basic idea behind the essay is that gratitude can be learned and cultivated.  And it takes practice to get it down.

Besides the 2 gratitude ideas outlined in “Landing Gratitude”, I have done different gratitude exercises with my kids like in this post and in this post and in this post.

But here is another gratitude activity we are going to try tonight for Family Night.  Instead of just brainstorming all the things we are grateful for, this time we will pick ONE thing we are grateful for and then we have to do something about it.  We have to show our gratitude- kind of  like a gratitude pledge.  We will write the one thing we are grateful on the front of the leaf.  And on the back of the leaf we are going to say what we could do to show gratitude.

For example, if I write down “sisters” on my leaf maybe on the back of the leaf, I pledge that I will write each one of them a letter and tell them why I am grateful for them.

Or if I write down “my body” on the front of my leaf.  Maybe on the back I vow to not complain about any part of my body for the rest of the month.

Or if I say “husband” maybe I pledge to surprise him at work with a plate of chocolate chip cookies.

You get the idea.  Basically walk the walk, just don’t talk the talk.

Choose any gratitude activity that best fits your family, but let’s make sure we actively teach our kids about gratitude.  It doesn’t just come naturally.  It doesn’t just come by example.  Gratitude is a skill to be taught, learned, practiced and landed.