Gratitude & Kindness (2 page)

Kindness Tip
Kindness can be defined as the act of being good, charitable, pleasant, and considerate of others. When you practice kindness, it becomes easier to be filled with gratitude. Likewise, when you practice gratitude, it becomes easier to be filled with kindness. Both have remarkable effects on happiness.

When your child is able to treat the rude, mean child with kindness or compassion, it is a step toward changing the world. But first they need to be shown, by you, that kindness is an essential part of life. It will be important to practice genuine gratitude and kindness in order to show your children meaningful ways to relate to others.

Why These Two Social Skills Are Important

As we have already me
ntioned, gratitude and kindness are instrumental to the future happiness of your children: Grandmothers have always known it, and modern science has proven it. Kind deeds for others make us happier people, and the happier we are, the more likely we are to perform kind acts.

A child who is grateful and kind early in life is given a rock star advantage in all things. By cultivating gratitude in your children, you simultaneously cultivate kindness.

Grateful Children = Kind Children.

When you are able to relish positive experiences and enjoy and appreciate the things that you already have, it lowers stress levels and significantly increases your happiness. Martin Seligman
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studied the implications of Positive Psychology with 411 research participants. He instructed them to deliver a letter of gratitude to people in their lives they had never thanked before.

There was instantly a huge increase in their happiness scores and a major decrease in their depression scores. The benefits of this lasted for about a month—pretty significant in our opinion. It’s clear we can encourage kindness with such a simple
gratitude action
and, that combined, the elements of kindness and gratitude make a potent recipe for happiness.

Gratitude and kindness also give us a huge social advantage. When your children practice these strengths, they become aware and conscious of other people’s feelings, which results in positive social adjustment as they grow up.

As your children become internally motivated to care for others, they will develop their own tendencies toward compassion and other social behaviors that will help them connect with other people in powerful ways. Social connections and good relationships are essential for a happy life.

Gratitude Action
To experience the wonderful effects of gratitude, write a gratitude letter to someone in your life to whom you cannot deliver the letter - someone who has passed away, perhaps. Take this opportunity to appreciate their kindness. Some of you may ask “what’s the point of this gratitude action if you don’t send the letter?”. Research shows that you do not have to deliver the gratitude letters for them to have a positive effect on your social, physical or emotional well-being.

In fact, the simple answer is that the intention, appreciation and gratitude action of the grateful person doesn’t require recognition or appreciation for what they have done to have the positive effect. This is about the grateful person’s own increased life satisfaction, optimism, joy, pleasure, and better sleep and improved immune system.
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It also helps children to be resilient, compassionate, and forgiving.

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The Entitled Child Today

Why are there so many children that feel entitled instead of grateful? Consistently in our workshops, there are an overwhelming majority of parents who state that their children and their communities are increasingly impacted by entitlement. Some are calling this an epidemic, and we find ourselves regularly being begged for help.

The entitled soul feels that they are owed advantages, friendship and rewards just because they are alive. These children get into more trouble at school. They are notoriously impatient, have low motivation, are demanding, and are described by others as “whiny” and “high maintenance.” They tend to be hesitant to acce
pt the consequences of their actions and almost never take a “NO” from others eloquently or with graciousness.

To the modern parent, this can cause endless worries, not to mention the dreaded parental guilt: “Did I spoil my child?” “Where did I go wrong?” “It is all my fault...”

An entitled child is a child crying out for help—but that might not be obvious to them or to their parents. The help they are crying out for is linked to their own inability to regulate feelings such as sadness, stress, fear, anger, boredom, inadequacy, loneliness and rejection. A child who acts entitled is seeking stuff or special privileges as a means of distracting or deflecting from these uncomfortable feelings. Giving them the things they are demanding is not truly what they are looking for from their parents. It’s what it sounds like, but that’s not what it is. We encourage you to be more curious about what your child’s emotional state actually is. Cater to the emotional needs that may be fueling entitled behavior. Pull back from indulging in the material demands and granting privileges.

If you are reading this because your children lean more easily toward being entitled than grateful, not to worry. This is why we wrote the book—and why we want to spread the word to everyone, whether they have children or not. As Western culture spreads globally, it supports children and youth in always wanting more, and our children will expect that from everyone if nothing changes. Generation Y has a reputation as being narcissistic, ungrateful and entitled, expecting jobs, university placements, high salaries, and families and friends that give, give, give.

If your children are turning into these not-so-grateful members of society, you can still do something about it. Entitled children grow up to have a hard time at work, in social situations, and in life in general. You can prevent that by learning how to implement gratitude and kindness in all of your lives now.

Exercise: The Parenting Values Checklist

Do you know what your parenting values are? Many parents wing it when it comes to raising their children. They have a sense of the values they would like their children to have, but they have not mindfully taken the time to actually sit and reflect and make note of them.

Listing the values that you would like your children to have will allow you to parent your children according to these values in a more coherent manner. Before you take a closer look at how to enhance gratitude and kindness in your home, you need a clear vision of what you value and what you are hoping to support in terms of future qualities and strengths in your children.

1. Check the qualities / values that you envision for your children:
   

   	Happiness		Inquisitive / Curious
   	Success		High Self-Esteem
   	Assertive		Honest
   	Leader		Respectful
   	Emotionally Connected		Grateful
   	Kind		Unique
   	Financially Successful		Persistent
   	Adventurous		Good Sense of Humor
   	Positive Attitude		Family Centered
   	Passionate		Love of Learning
   	Forgiving		Many Friendship
   	Generous		Motivated
   	Empathic		Spiritual
   	Risk Taker		Hard Working
   	Disciplined		Justice Focused
   	Loving		Affectionate
   	Compassionate		Creative
   	Self-Centered		Impatient / Demanding
   	Entitled		Greedy

2. Now go back and circle the top six that are the most important to you.
   
3. Go back one more time and put a star by those that you believe you are already doing a lot to support.
   

Okay, chances are you did not check off any of the last four qualities, nor did you fill in the blank spaces with qualities such as angry, bossy, whiny, or rude. But, if you have given-in to a child who asks for something in a rude or impatient manner, you are supporting the growth of these qualities
not
the growth of positive qualities such as assertiveness or motivation. We say this because, if you are like most of us, you may have tried to reassure yourself that you are supporting positive qualities to get yourself off the hook when reflecting on your parenting successes and failures. But the truth is—when you don’t challenge rude behavior, you support and encourage it instead.

Your parenting values checklist should be unique: If you have values that are not on this chart, add them in. Every family is different—what works for one does not necessarily work for another.

Our hope is that once you have completed your checklist, you will be able to see which qualities you would like to boost to enhance your family’s well-being.

The Development of Gratitude

What we expect from our three-year-old in terms of appreciation and gratitude is clearly different than what we expect from our 17-year-old. What is reasonable to expect, and what must be expected, needs to be viewed in terms of development of the child through each of the ages and stages of development. In this next section, we describe the typical thoughts of children at developmental stages and the Positive Gratitude Behavior that can be expected at that age using the revolutionary cognitive development research of Jean Piaget.
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(Prior to Piaget, psychologists basically thought children were just less smart versions
of adults.)

The goal, of course, is to get our children through each of these stages by introducing the values and actions as they are ready for them. Gratitude and kindness can be taught from infancy and are best grown by consistency of modeling and coaching through all the later stages of development. It is easiest on our children and on us if we start early, but it is never too late to dig in to teaching our children gratitude lessons and habits. We humans are adaptable and resilient, and can almost always learn and grow.

Points to Remember, Actions to Take

In this section of each chapter, we do a quick review, highlighting the key takeaways you will need to familiarize yourself with as you go along.

• Key 1: Children learn by what you DO in and out of the home.
  They witness how you respond to gratitude and kindness— and are learning directly from that. This directly affects how they feel about the world, themselves, and other people, changing their perspectives in very real ways.
  
• Key 2: Adjust your parenting style.
  It is possible that some of the things you think you are teaching your children, you are NOT teaching them—and the things you do not think you are teaching them, you actually are. Gratitude and kindness are a way of being. They are not just words or actions.
  
• Key 3: What is gratitude?
  Gratitude is an affirmation of goodness. By being grateful, we affirm that there are good things in the world that we have received. Gratitude is also the recognition that the source for this goodness is outside ourselves.
  
• Key 4: What is kindness?
  Neuroscience tells us the experience of kindness changes the brain. It is only learned when it is used; you need to offer your children opportunities to both give and receive kindness.
  
• Key 5: Why are gratitude and kindness important?
  Gratitude and kindness lead to an abundance of life satisfaction, optimism, joy, pleasure, improved sleep, and a better immune system. They create children that are resilient, compassionate, and forgiving. Science has proven this with extensive testing and research.
  
• Key 6: Entitled children are difficult children.
  These children get into more trouble at school. They are notoriously impatient, have low motivation, are demanding, and are described by others as “whiny” and “high maintenance.” They tend to be hesitant to accept the consequences of their actions.