Giving Thanks

I find it hard to believe that it’s already Thanksgiving!  On behalf of everyone here at CCEP, we give thanks for your family's presence in our lives. Our lives are enriched each day as we get to be a part of your children's magnificent growth and development. It’s a privilege to lead our community, so please know how grateful I am for all of you and our community.

Young children share their gratitude in many ways naturally,  but they need their caregivers to provide opportunities to authentically show gratitude beyond just saying “thank you.” Teaching children gratitude can help them feel happier, support better social relationships, and improve overall health and well-being. Strategies that can help foster gratitude in kids include asking gratitude-focused questions, performing acts of kindness, and modeling gratitude in your own life. Here are some ideas and strategies we can utilize to teach our children how to give and receive thanks.

How to Teach Children Gratitude

By, Amy Morin, LCSW 

Updated on February 01, 2024

 Reviewed by, Carly Snyder, MD

Grateful Kids Are Happier

A 2019 study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies found that gratitude is linked to happiness in children by age 5. Instilling gratitude in your kids at a young age could help them grow up to be happier people.

One older study found that grateful children (ages 11 to 13) are happier, more optimistic, and have better social support. They also report more satisfaction with their schools, families, communities, friends, and themselves. Grateful kids also tend to give more social support to others as well.

How Gratitude Makes You Happier

Ask Gratitude Questions

Once your child remembers to say "thank you" on a regular basis, it can be time to dig a little deeper to ensure that they aren’t just going through the socially prescribed motions of saying "Thank you."

Start having conversations about what it means to be thankful and take their understanding of gratitude to a whole new level by incorporating more gratitude components.

The Raising Grateful Children Project at UNC Chapel Hill has revealed that gratitude has four key parts:

1. Noticing: Recognizing the things you have to be grateful for.

2. Thinking: Thinking about why you’ve been given those things.

3. Feeling: The emotions you experience due to the things you’ve been given.

4. Doing: The way you express appreciation.

Researchers from UNC encourage parents to ask kids questions to help foster a deeper sense of gratitude. Here are some questions that can help kids experience all four gratitude components:

1. Notice: What do you have in your life to be grateful for? Are there things to be grateful for beyond the actual gifts someone has given you? Are you grateful for any people in your life?

2. Think: What do you think about this present? Do you think you should give something to the person who gave it to you? Do you think you earned the gift? Do you think the person gave you a gift because they thought they had to or because they wanted to?

3. Feel: Does it make you feel happy to get this gift? What does it feel like inside? What about this gift makes you feel happy?

4. Do: Is there a way to show how you feel about this gift? Does your feeling about this gift make you want to share this feeling by giving to someone else?

Whenever your child receives a physical gift or someone shows kindness to them, strike up a conversation that helps them experience more gratitude. You also might start conversations that show how you both think, feel, and respond to the people and gifts you’re grateful for in your life.

Perform Acts of Kindness

There are many things your child can do to show appreciation for other people. This might involve returning a favor, like loaning a toy to a friend who is kind. Or it could involve an act of service like collecting food for pantries and food drives or collecting gently used coats for children who can’t afford to buy a new coat.

You might even decide to take on a family project, like writing thank you letters to the first responders in your community after a natural disaster. Make it clear that you don’t need to reserve gratitude for those individuals that you know personally—there are many people in the community whom you might feel grateful for as well.

Model Gratitude

A 2016 study published in Applied Developmental Science found that grateful parents tend to raise grateful children. There’s a good chance this is because kids learn to be grateful by hearing and seeing their parents experience gratitude.

Here are several ways you can model gratitude for your children:

• Say "Thank you.": Whether you thank the clerk at the store or you thank your child for clearing the table, make sure you’re thanking people often.

• Talk about gratitude: Make it a point to share what you’re grateful for. Even when you have a rough day or something bad happens, point out that there’s still a lot to feel grateful for. Instead of complaining about the rain, talk about being grateful that the plants are being watered so you’ll have food to eat.

• Express gratitude: When your child sees you writing “thank you” notes or sending a token of appreciation to someone, you’ll teach them to do the same.

Researchers have found that when parents engage in more daily socialization acts designed to target gratitude, children display higher levels of gratitude as well.8

Creating a Family Gratitude Project

A family project can be a good way to get everyone involved in expressing gratitude. Finding a way to collect and share things that each person in the family is grateful for can be a great inspiration for family discussions.

Gratitude Board

For example, you could create a family bulletin board where everyone can add notes about what they’re thankful for. You could do this by using sticky notes, a whiteboard where everyone writes with a marker, or colorful pages that can be tacked up.

It can be a great conversation piece as well. You might talk about certain things someone feels grateful for, or you might talk about how fast the board fills up because you have so many good things going on in life.

Gratitude Jar

You could also create a gratitude jar that everyone contributes to. Keep a jar in an easily accessible place, like the kitchen, and keep some slips of paper handy. Encourage everyone to write down something they’re grateful for (maybe once a day) and put it in the jar.

Then, you can read over the slips of paper together as a family—maybe once a week or once a month. It can be a great way to honor all the good things happening in everyone’s lives.

No matter what type of family project you start, make it something that gets everyone thinking and talking more about gratitude. Listening to the things everyone else is grateful for can encourage even more gratitude in the family.

Look for the Silver Lining

Help your kids see that something good can come from difficult circumstances. If a soccer game gets rescheduled due to rain, talk about the bright side of the situation. Say something like, "Well at least we don't have to be outside in the cold. We can play board games together instead and that will be fun."

You might also point out how to be grateful for what you had, even when it's no longer here. For example, you might say, "It's really sad our fish died but I'm grateful we got to have him for six months." Of course, you don't want to sound uncaring and callous, but you can make it clear that you can be both grateful and sad at the same time while honoring a loss.