November 2019 - EASTERN OREGON PARENT - 7
This Thanksgiving, practice finding joy in gratitude
By LIBBY HOFFMAN
Have you ever
walked through
the store with your
children and inten-
tionally avoided the
toy section because
you know that all you
will hear is “can I get
that?” Sometimes it
seems like all children
know how to do is
ask for stuff, espe-
cially after you just
bought them some-
thing else. Wouldn’t
it be nice if just once
they could be grateful
for what they have?
The great news is that
gratitude is a skill and
it can be developed,
it just takes practice.
We sometimes get
stuck in a rut where
all we focus on is
what we don’t have,
and we believe that
if we could just get it we would be
happier. The world of marketing
is great at perpetuating this idea,
that we need to buy their product
and then we will be happy. Unfor-
tunately, children are easy targets
of this. They see all the “joy” a child
has in the commercial or on the
box and they think that if they had
the item, then they would have the
same joy.
Here is the problem, we don’t
get joy from having things, joy
comes from gratitude. You might be
wondering “what’s the difference?”
Here it is: You can have gratitude
without having the things, but you
can’t have joy from any specific
thing. The joy comes when you
have gratitude for the thing. For
Strategies
the focus is on giving thanks for
what we have, practicing gratitude
is at its core. As we learn to find
gratitude in the small or everyday
events, we will start to find our joy.
By embracing this as adults, we can
model to our children where real
joy comes from and how we don’t
always need what the marketing
gurus tell us. And on top of all that,
there are tons of benefits to your
health when you are grateful.
Here are some fun ways to prac-
tice gratitude:
• Have a gratitude jar where chil-
dren write down something they
were thankful for that day.
• When you are driving in the car,
go through the alphabet and for
each letter say something you
are grateful for.
example, a child might have a ball,
but the ball itself isn’t the joy, it’s in
the gratitude the child has for the
ball. Another way to think about it:
What if you got a speeding ticket?
There’s no joy in that because you
aren’t grateful for the speeding
ticket. Where we find gratitude is
where we find joy.
So here is where the skill comes
in — you can practice gratitude
for anything. Now, I’m not saying
you need to be grateful for hor-
rible things that happen, but find
something that did go well or some
time when someone helped you. In
Brene Brown’s research on shame
and joy, she found that people who
had joy in life practiced gratitude
daily. They made an effort to name
something each day that they were
grateful for. This act of noticing and
valuing what you have or what has
happened, increases your joy and
happiness.
As we practice gratitude we start
to increase our joy. And even better,
we start to have more gratitude.
See, here is the other thing: What
you focus on, you get more of. It’s
like when you play a sport and they
say keep your eye on the prize, or
like when you ride your bike and
where you look is where you go.
What you focus on, you get more
of. So when you focus on the things
that went well or where people
were kind to you, you start to see
those more and you get more joy.
As we enter a month where
• Write a family grateful book with
each person having a page to
write or draw.
• Each week, write a thank you
note to someone who did some-
thing you were grateful for.
• Have a dry erase board in the
entry or kitchen and take turns
writing something the family is
grateful for.
________
Libby Hoffman is the Executive
Director at Pioneer Relief Nursery,
a partner with the Blue Mountain
Early Learning Hub, which works
to bridge early childhood resources
and prepare children for kinder-
garten. For more information visit
www.bluemountainearlylearning-
hub.org.