Thanksgiving Rituals for Families
Want your kids to learn about gratitude?
Jeffrey Froh, a psychology prof at Hofstra University in New York, studies kids and gratitude. Here's what he's found:
1.
Middle-school students were asked to count their blessings for two
weeks by listing five things they were grateful for. The control group
listed complaints about hassles in their lives. The kids who focused on
blessings felt more gratitude, more life satisfaction, more optimism
and were more positive.
2. Kids were asked to write a thank-you
letter and deliver it in person “to someone who has done something
really kind for you, but you never gave them the thanks they deserve."
These kids reported more happiness than kids who didn't write the
letters -- not just immediately, but three and five months later.
3.
Adolescents who report feeling gratitude are happier, healthier, more
content, more optimistic, and more likely to be helpful to other people
in every way.. They're also less materialistic, less envious and less
likely to be depressed.
So how can we help kids feel more
gratitude? The best way is to make gratitude into a mindset, or a
habit. And what better place to start than Thanksgiving?
What
can you do to add some meaning back into the holiday and help your kids
discover the gratitude attitude on which Thanksgiving is founded? Here
are some ideas.
- Start now. Have kids count their blessings by listing up to five things they’re grateful for, every night before they go to sleep.
- On Thanksgiving morning, have kids write a thank-you letter to mail (or deliver in person in the near future) “to someone who has done something really kind for you, but you never gave them the thanks they deserve."
- Bake pies with your kids; drop extras at your local homeless shelter or fire station.
- Blessing Tablecloth- Ask everyone to write 3 things they're grateful for, their name & the date on a plain white tablecloth using permanent markers. Repeat annually with the same cloth & it will become an heirloom, as the children grow and the family constellation changes.
- During the meal, clink your glass, make a toast of gratitude that you all get to be together, and then go around the table, each person saying at least three things they're grateful for.
- Express your thanks through service. Volunteer together at a shelter that feeds hungry people, make cards for troops, have the kids make peanut butter and seed-stuffed pinecones for the birds.
- Make a blessing tree and post it on the wall. On Thanksgiving, everyone writes things they're grateful for on construction paper leaves and tapes them to the tree. If you save this and add to it every year, it will become an heirloom, as the children grow and the family constellation changes.
- Play "alphabet thanks" - Each person takes a turn to name something they are thankful for in alphabetical order, and remember what everyone before them said they were thankful for.
- Get a roll of adding machine tape and pass it around the table so everyone can write on it Blessings for the world and things they're grateful for. Put lengths of it up around the house like prayer flags.
