Generosity Grows out of Gratitude

We share a simple parenting idea: teach gratitude first and generosity follows. We walk through practical ways to help kids show real appreciation at home, at parties, and out in the world. 
• starting with basic thank you skills
• teaching tipping and small acts of appreciation in service settings 
• modeling gratitude so kids learn by watching 
If you have any questions or need a sounding board, you can message me on Instagram at BeThereParent. And if you found this episode helpful, follow, set up automatic downloads, review, and share. I'd appreciate it. 

Transcript

Tempo: 120.0

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi, I'm Sheila and I'm here to help you be their parent. As parents, we want our kids to be kind, caring, and generous friends to those around them. All of that takes time and our effort to teach them how to be those things. I think that to teach generosity, you first need to teach them gratitude. You need to teach your kids how to show thanks to others and to show appreciation. This is an ongoing lesson because there are so many ways to show appreciation and many reasons to thank others. You can always start with when your kids receive gifts. You can easily teach your toddler to say or sign thank you. Show them how to look at the person and then say it. As they get older, you can teach them to add to it something like, thank you for the bluey toy. Bluey is my favorite show. It helps your child acknowledge that the gift giver tried to get them something they would like. As they grow in this, you will need to teach them to show gratitude even if it's something they didn't want or expect. We all know that someone gives pajamas, socks, or underwear at Christmas. We know it's coming. So you need to prepare your child ahead of time that they still need to say thank you because you know it might be filling a need that they have. Or another way to look at it is that even if it's not their favorite gift, the person giving it to them still spent the time to shop and wrap it and the money to purchase it for them. This is a teachable moment that will help your child to recognize generosity in others. When it comes to gifts that they don't need or want, or it's a duplicate, plan ahead. You need to tell them before the event that they still need to thank the person in the moment and that later, after the event, you will take care of exchanging it for them. Then follow through. This will help your child to be more genuine in the moment to say thank you if they're not trying to process what they're supposed to do with two of the same Lego set or the shirt that looks like it's too little for them. Teach them not to be fake, but to find something positive about the gift and say thank you. That's it. Now, depending on your kid, you may have to explicitly teach them to not announce to all of the guests that you will exchange it for them. I'm just saying, save yourself an awkward moment. Another way to show generosity is to brainstorm ideas for gifts to give others. We would ask our kids what their friends' favorite things were or what they liked to play with. It helped our kids think about what their friends would want and not what our kids would like to receive as a gift. When it came to Christmas, we would try to involve our kids and what we purchased for the other kids or the adults in the family. But the best thing we did and continue to do, we just kind of fell into it. Everyone was responsible for picking out stocking stuffers for the rest of the family that would be with us at Christmas. It caused my kids to try and figure out what some of the family that they didn't always spend a lot of time with would like. And they got pretty good at it. Sometimes our stocking stuffers are far more meaningful than the gifts under the tree. You could also have your kids write thank you notes to their teacher or teachers at Christmas, Teacher Appreciation Week, which is usually the first full week of May, andor at the end of the year. As a teacher, I always love getting notes from my students or their parents, way more than a gift. Teach your kids about gratuities at restaurants and other businesses that involve services that are tipped. That way, when your kids go out to restaurants or they get their haircut when they're on their own as an older teen or young adult, that they'll tip the employees. You could also have your kids when they're little write little notes or draw pictures for your server or the cook while you're waiting for the food to be served. These are just a few ideas to try to help your kids show gratitude. As they see opportunities to show gratitude that will translate into generosity. We didn't really teach our kids specific lessons on generosity, but we taught them to be grateful. We did our best to show others appreciation in front of them. There are a lot of lessons that our kids learn by watching us more than listening to what we say. So start simply helping your kids show gratitude to others. These are easy lessons to teach, and I'm sure your kids will learn to enjoy showing others how grateful they are. You're doing an amazing job raising kids who will be generous and grateful adults. You've got this. If you have any questions or need a sounding board, you can message me on Instagram at BeThereParent. And if you found this episode helpful, follow, set up automatic downloads, review, and share. I'd appreciate it.