As we continue walking through the new year, let's continue to look at our bite-size mindfulness.
This week is extending last week's gratitude mindfulness.
Our challenge is to extend gratitude to others, especially our children.
As you consider this mindfulness I want you to be open to the task. It is easy to make a list and state "I am grateful for my family" but it is another thing to then express that to your family. As a parent I know that there are some days it is difficult to extend gratitude to children. But they need it.
On The Child Mind Institute website we are presented with helpful tips on growing gratitude in children. The first tip is to set the example.
When we think about setting the example we first consider just being a grateful person and saying please and thank you to other adults. This is a simple task compared to looking at a child and genuinely expressing gratitude. Saying "Thank you for having a great day at school" "Thank you for being kind to your sibling", even saying thank you for chores that are expected of them.
In my research on this topic I was presented with an idea that I did not agree with but understand the concept. I want to take the concept and change it up a little and make it better.
On the website Fatherly.com an article discussed the topic of building up grateful children. The author of the article stated that sometimes it's ok for children to "fake gratitude." When explained the author posed the scenario where a child receives a gift from grandma and it was a gift the child did not like. The author states that the child should say thank you and pretend to be grateful. I get it. But I want to look at it a different way.
Let's teach our children to be grateful for the time, thought, and money spent. Let's talk with our children about be grateful for having the grandmother try. Or simply being grateful for having a grandmother.
Teaching our children to think of more parts than the present itself opens the child to a bigger world than themselves.
When we simply focus on the gift and a fake gratitude we teach the children that the gift was all that mattered. Teach them that the person giving it matters. That person's time matters. That person's money matters. And our genuine heart of gratitude matters.
When we practice gratitude as a mindful moment we take more time to be present in the gratitude and not simply being grateful for show.
Taking time to grow gratitude in children means mindfully living gratitude in our own lives.
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