There’s been a lot of research about how beneficial gratitude is for us. I don’t think there’s a lot of debate about why we should welcome the practice into our lives, it’s more about how. This is a question I get asked a lot. Like with so many things, it makes sense by kind of taking an inventory of what is going well in this area and building on that. Maybe your kid has got the habit of making eye contact and saying thank you down? Or maybe thank you notes are their thing? If gratitude is important to you, they are probably already showing it in a bunch of ways.

Here are a few things to try:

Start with a picture book. There are so many great ones. I love The Thank You Book by Mary Lynn Ray and The Thankful Book by Todd Parr. Both are simple and could be used with kids of different ages.
Make a wall or window of gratitude. Use window markers or post it notes to create a visual reminder of the things your family is grateful for. This will get a lot of attention and remind everyone of this shared value!
Introduce a gratitude journal. My daughter has a list that she fills out once in a while…we don’t have a daily practice yet! During our quarantine, she started a journal to document what was going on and included a gratitude list as one of the entries. She wrote about kindness of neighbours and friends and fun times with me (yay!)
Make a game of it. Use dice or straws to make gratitude fun. You could colour code it, for example: Red for a person you are grateful for, Yellow for a place, Green for an experience, Blue for a thing, you get the idea.
Make a gratitude jar. Have fun with decorating it or just use an old jam jar. Scribble notes whenever you like and choose a time to read them to each other.

There are so many ideas! What you do is not important. It just needs to appeal to you and your kids and to be manageable too! One last thing to remember is that kids learn so much more from what we do than what we say. Every time you thank the mail carrier or garbage collector, your kid notices and remembers it. Thankfully, this is one of the easiest habits you’ll start at home!