Your Children Are Listening: Nine Messages They Need to Hear from You

parents don’t get any help from society. We live in a culture where a sense of entitlement is ubiquitous. There are daily media accounts of celebrities, professional athletes, CEOs, and politicians who believe that they deserve everything they receive and who react to their riches, status, and fame with smugness and disdain rather than gratitude. Advertising aimed at children tells them that it is their right to have what they want, how they want it, when they want it, and not be asked for anything in return. And research suggests that we are collectively moving further away from, rather than closer to, gratitude: Narcissism has risen significantly among college students in the past three decades, and a 2006 study of 200 celebrity actors, musicians, and comedians found that they were significantly more narcissistic than the average person, with reality-TV stars scoring the highest on narcissism.
THE POWER OF GRATITUDE
     
    It’s easy to overlook gratitude because, for most people, its expressions are often knee-jerk reactions; most adults say “thank you” without even thinking about it. Perhaps because there isn’t typically much thought behind gratitude, we take it for granted both as senders and as receivers. Yet, over the last decade, an expansive body of research has emerged demonstrating the extraordinary power that gratitude has in all aspects of our lives. For example, people who express gratitude have been found to be happier, to experience more positive emotions, to have lower levels of depression and stress, and to rate their relationships and lives as more fulfilling. They are more accepting of themselves and others, say they have more purpose and control in their lives, and are able to deal withlife transitions better. Grateful people also deal with challenges better because they maintain a positive attitude, reach out for support from others, and focus on finding solutions rather than dwelling on problems. There are social benefits as well: People who are grateful are generous, more empathic, better able to hear others’ perspectives, and more likely to help or support others. They also have stronger bonds to others. Most relevant here, children who regularly express gratitude are more optimistic about their families and schools.
    There is also an emerging body of literature that has found that gratitude isn’t just psychological, but rather affects us physiologically and neurologically. Gratitude appears to produce beneficial hormonal changes and boost the immune system. And these benefits aren’t just short-term. Ongoing practice at gratitude produces the repetition needed to wire the neural pathways that make it easier for children to override unhealthy thinking, emotions, and behaviors and to experience positive physiology, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in the future.
MESSAGES OF GRATITUDE
     
    Gratitude is a message that can be communicated to children through many conduits. That’s a good thing because, maybe more than any other message, you’re going to have to send the message of gratitude frequently and seemingly for ages before your children finally get it. Though it’s easy to blame your children for not expressing appropriate gratitude, their apparent unwillingness to absorb the message of gratitude isn’t really your children’s fault. Young children are often not developmentally ready to move beyond their egocentrism and recognize the role that others play in their lives. In turn, older children are probably being bombarded by messages from popular culture and peers that stand in sharp contrast to your messages of gratitude.
    The experience of gratitude can be thought of in three ways. First, you can send messages to your children about the awareness of what they should be grateful for. When you ask your children simply to recognize all that they have in their lives for which they can be thankful, you send the message of gratitude through several conduits. You send it simply by discussing gratitude with them and allowing them to process your words. They also think about and verbalize what they are grateful for. In this process, they will also experience emotions of empathy and caring that emerge from feeling gratitude. This internally directed experience with gratitude enables children to feel the full force of considering and appreciating everyone and everything for which they are grateful.
    Second, you can send messages to your children about expressing gratitude to