With Thanksgiving around the corner, there’s a lot to do on your list, besides cooking a turkey! But every Thanksgiving also brings with it a feeling of gratitude, and wanting to share that with friends and family. Your kids will feel this too, and want to help share in what they’re most grateful for this year. Deciding the best ways to help your kids see the gratitude of the holiday and how to properly show it to others is a great way to further celebrate the holiday.
Putting Feeling to Words
If your children are younger, they may feel gratitude but don’t really realize what it is or put a name to it. So, explaining what gratitude is to your children is key to properly celebrating the holiday later on. Once they start to get that definition in their mind, start giving them examples and even showing gratitude in action. Maybe you’re driving and someone lets you into the lane, and that can be a moment of gratitude, or you suddenly find a $5 bill in your coat, which can help cover groceries for the month. Showing them more real-world examples, both small and large, can help them grasp the feelings that are becoming actions. You can then start asking them what they are grateful for, and even keeping a log or notebook to write them down.
Thanksgiving Gratitude
For the holiday itself, you can have your children write down what they are grateful for to read out loud during dinner, or just go around the table and tell everyone. You can have your kids do this in different methods, whether it’s a turkey-hand that has what your child is grateful for on its feathers, or a gratitude jar where everyone writes it down and puts it inside. You can then read what people wrote during the dinner or waiting till later in the evening and even trying to guess who wrote what!
Future Gratitude
To help keep gratitude more in the fore-front of your everyday life, there are easy ways to help your children continue too. They can keep a Gratitude Journal or even use their social media account to post what they are grateful for every day, week, or month. If your kid is specifically grateful for something, such as sports, computers, or having food every day, use that to spark some volunteer work through their gratitude! Volunteering at a soup kitchen, a sports event (or teaching younger kids how to play a sport, if your child is older), or teaching a family member on how to use a computer.
Feeling and showing gratitude doesn’t have to end after Thanksgiving!
Katie Kyzivat