Mom2Mentor
Encouraging and motivating single mothers, reminding them of their strength and determination. They can succeed as a single parent as long as they remain focused.
Its not about how you arrived at the single mom title, but, its what you do with it!
Mom2Mentor
Teaching Our Children to Say "Thank You" Shouldn't Be an Afterthought
The Mom2Mentor podcast explores gratitude as an essential character seed to plant in our children's lives. Practicing thankfulness is a fundamental skill that parents must teach at home, not expect schools to cover.
• Recent appearance on the Tell Me Something Good podcast with Travis Patton Sr
• Gratitude means acknowledging the blessings in our lives, from food to health to safety
• Children should learn to say "thank you" without constant reminders
• Parents must model gratitude by showing appreciation in front of their children
• Create a daily practice of sharing what you're thankful for with your children
• Teaching gratitude proactively reduces the need for correcting behavior later
• Being intentional about character development is a parent's responsibility
Go to singlemomsunitedpodcast.com to take my survey about this episode and suggest future topics. You can also find all episodes on my YouTube channel at Mom2Mentor.
https://singlemomsunitedpodcast.com/
It's not how you arrived at the title, but what you do with it.
Hey, ladies, welcome to the Mom2Mentor podcast. If this is your first time joining, welcome If you are a repeat listener. Thank you for your loyalty. Hey, this has been an exciting week for me. I've been able to participate in another interview. Imagine that me, the introvert, actually going on camera on the Tell Me Something Good podcast with Travis Patton Sr. So if you all do listen to Listen to podcasts and you're interested in seeing who's behind the voice or the face behind the voice, definitely go visit his podcast. It's very good and motivating and it was a wonderful experience to do.
Speaker 1:The interview is because I'm going to be branching out myself and wanting you to be on my show, but I got to know what that's. I got to know what it feels like sitting in the hot seat and it was fun. It was fun and definitely different, right, but I appreciate him asking me to be on the show and he's a fun character and very exciting. I learned a lot from him. So, again, if you want to put a face to the voice, go to the Tell Me Something Good podcast and the last episode is around the weight of it all as far as being a single parent, and I don't think you'll be disappointed because there is good content that was discussed Anyhow. So, as these past few weeks I've been focusing on planting character seeds and I've talked about honesty, I talked about respect, I talked about compassion.
Speaker 1:This week I'm talking about gratitude. Another word for gratitude is thank you, being thankful, right. So we want to plant the seed of gratitude. So we want to plant the seed of gratitude and why it's important. When I was growing up, and even when I was raising my kids, I would always say when someone would give them something, you'd go back and say what do you say? Having food on your table? We should be explaining to our kids why they need to be thankful for that, because there's so many people out there that do not have food to eat. They need to learn to be saying you know what? Yeah, maybe some chicken nuggets or a little bit of this or a little bit of that, but be thankful for it. Be thankful you can still get up and put your clothes on without help. Be thankful that you can go out and play and not worry about having an asthma attack. Be thankful that you can see you can do things on your own, because there are so many people out there that does not have that opportunity like they do. And certainly, mom, they should thank you If you're going above and beyond and just doing the little things. Or they say, mom, can I have some ice cream? And they don't need no ice cream, but you go out there and buy them an ice cream cone or a sundae anyway. They should be telling you thank you, yeah, and then how do you cultivate that mom? How do you grow that behavior? Thank you for asking you. Show that behavior. Let your children see you thanking people. Let them see you showing gratitude for the things that you have.
Speaker 1:We have to do a better job of displaying more positive behavior in front of our children than negative behavior in front of our children the negative behavior. There's enough negativity going on in this world that we do not need to add on to that. But just a simple thank you goes a long way. I remember my stepfather telling my kids, or educating my kids, to tell me thank you. And again it caught me off guard, right, because, wow, I'm supposed to do this. Right, they're my kids. They didn't ask to be here, so I'm supposed to take care of them, but when I saw him talking to them and explaining to them that nothing is easy and learn to be grateful and display gratitude for everything, because we could be worse off.
Speaker 1:If your children have a roof over their head, they have their own bed, and even if they don't have their own bed, they still have a roof. And if they're eating and they have clothes, it's okay to say thank you. And, matter of fact, at the end of the day, mom, one of the things you could do is ask them what are you thankful for? Tell me one thing you're thankful for and then, after they tell you, then you tell them, or vice versa, maybe you want to lead it off, to get the ball rolling. One thing that you're thankful for and maybe it could be you're thankful that if you have school-age children and given today's environment as far as schools and these school shootings, you can say I'm thankful you got to school to and from safely, I'm thankful for that, and then say what are you thankful for? And they can repeat what you said. But now you got to get in the habit of doing that. That's how you cultivate this right, because otherwise it's going to fall offside and they're going to start taking things for granted, and we don't want that. We don't want our children to take things for granted, and as parents, we shouldn't take things for granted. Always be thankful, always be thankful.
Speaker 1:On the podcast show that I attended earlier this week, I was telling him that we have to do a better job as parents in getting outside of the correcting behavior of our children. Right, because, like I mentioned before we talked about, or I talked about when someone gives you something, we tell our children. What are you supposed to say? We shouldn't have to do that. It means to be to have gratitude, so it should be an automatic thank you. When someone gives them something, we shouldn't have to remind them. So I told him that if we do a better job of teaching our children, then we won't have to do so much correcting on the back end, because we are being proactive. That's how you build good character, moms. That's how you build good characters.
Speaker 1:Don't put this on the schools, because, guess what? They're probably not even teaching gratitude in schools. That's probably not even part of the curriculum. So who are they supposed to learn this from? Yeah, that's right, you, me, yeah, that's who they're supposed to learn this from. These are things that the schools are not going to teach our children. And then we wonder why, wow, these kids aren't the same like they used to be? Because back in the day, we were taught to have gratitude, we were taught to say thank you. Nobody had to remind us. Our parents didn't put that on the schools to do, they owned it. And that's where we have to be today, mom. That's where we have to be. We have to own responsibility for educating our children around basic skills, basic behaviors. Yeah, and it's going to pay off. That's the good news. It's gonna pay off.
Speaker 1:All right, ladies, briefing to the point today, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did tell another single mom, and also I have a survey out on my website, singlemomsunitedpodcastcom, and I would love to get some feedback. Did you like this episode? If you've heard other episodes, if you liked it and if you have ideas of other topics you'd like for me to talk about, I'll be happy to do that. But you got to tell me. You got to tell me. You can also go to my YouTube channel, moms to Mentor. You will find all of these episodes out there, and I just created a video, again coming out of my comfort zone, promoting the Mom to Mentor podcast. So, ladies, help me, help you by going and providing some feedback to me. All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did again, tell another mom and hopefully I'll get back on regular production of these episodes by getting these out weekly. So stay tuned for next week I'll have another character seed that I'm going to plant and look forward to bringing it to you. Have a great day.
