3 ways to teach gratefulness

Character Matters: 3 Ways to Teach Your Children Gratitude

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3 ways to teach your children gratefulness

Teaching Children to Have Grateful Hearts

We live in a fast-paced world that focuses  us on what can we get.  TV, videos, advertisements focus our attention and our children’s attention on getting more things for ourselves.  Many days, we forget to be grateful for the many blessings we have focusing on what we feel we don’t have.

Grateful hearts recognize the many blessings you have received.  Ungrateful hearts always want more, no matter how you have been given.  It’s important to teach our children gratefulness.

3 Ways to Teach Gratefulness

Teach your children to say thank you.

Help you child have a grateful heart and recognize the gifts and sacrifices of others.  Teach your children to say thank you even for small gifts.

When your children are old enough to write, teach them to write thank you notes and show appreciation in writing.  After birthdays and Christmas send notes to grandparents, aunts & uncles and friends thanking them for coming to their party and giving them a gift.

Say Grace or a prayer before each meal

All blessings come from God’s graciousness to us.  Stopping to say a simple prayer before each meal reminds us as adults that God has blessed us and teaches our children all that we have comes from God.

Let your children say simple prayers when they are young.  If you have several children and they each want to pray at dinner do not discourage them.  You could allow each of them to say a short prayer of thanks or let each of them give thanks for different things.

Simple prayers at dinner time instill in our children’s mind the attitude of gratefulness and all that we have comes from God.

Give to others from the abundance we have received

Sharing with others from the blessings and abundance we have received is a way to show gratefulness and to teach our children to be grateful. Giving to others teaches us to have a generous and compassionate heart to others.

Selfishness is the opposite of gratefulness.  Selfish people want to keep and gather all they can, but grateful people know the joy of giving to others.

Giving can include many things not just money or “things”.  If you have limited financial resources, you can teach your children to give their time to others.

Your turn…

How do you teach your children gratefulness?

Until next time be smart

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