Gratitude

“If the only prayer you say in your entire life is “thank you,”
that would suffice.”
Meister Eckhart

 My stepdad sent me the above quote and I think it is just lovely. Showing gratitude towards others is something I am trying hard to teach my children. The benefits of gratitude for kids and adults is numerous; better emotional health, strengthened ability to cope with stress, improved ability to empathize with others, the list goes on and on. This Thanksgiving month we’ve been working a lot on a few gratitude specific projects.

Thank you cards

Anika and I baked cookies and wrote very overdue thank you cards to some wonderful neighbors who have been so kind to us over the past three years. At first Anika struggled to think of what we should thank them for, but with a few suggestions her memory was sparked and the ideas were flowing. She LOVED delivering the cookies and notes and as soon as we were done asked me who else we could thank.

Candy Buy Back for the troops

There is a fantastic program where local participating dentist offices encourage kids to donate their Halloween candy and in exchange they will pay a $1.00 per pound. All collected candy gets sent to the troops over seas. Anika and I discussed what it means to be in the military and I explained in an age appropriate way some of the sacrifices that these women and men make for us. She drew pictures and thank you’s to go along with the candy. 

Gratitude Jar

This is a family project that I hope to keep going all year. I cut strips of paper and then we used a mason jar to hold them. On each strip of paper members of our family can think of things they are grateful for. At the end of the month we will review what was written.

Anika, Jacob and I had a lot of fun with our gratitude projects this month but the best part was Anika’s self created act of gratitude a couple of days ago. At a local store we stumbled across a cute little setup with a kid size table to write letters to Santa and a mailbox next to it to mail them in. Anika asked me to dictate her letter to Santa. To my surprise instead of asking him for toys for Christmas she proceeded to have me tell him how great he was, how hard he works, how kind he is to bring presents every year. Not one word that came out of her mouth included a request for toys. She wasn’t writing Santa her Christmas wish list, she was writing Santa a thank you letter. Wow. I was blown away. 

And Jacob what did he learn this month….well he now says, “You’re welcome” when we hand him things he asks for. So close Jakey, so close. We will continue to reinforce that thank you comes first, followed by your welcome from the other individual. But…for his little 19 months of age, I’m pretty blown away by him too.