Good Parenting: How To Raise Your Child To Be Grateful

I am the one who makes dinner in my family. My husband always makes a big show of thanking me for a great dinner (Even when it is not so great.) I love the compliments and the recognition. Making dinner gets pretty boring and it helps to know that what I do for my family is appreciated.

How did this all get started? In our pre-marital counseling classes, our instructor told us  that whoever makes dinner should be thanked. It is a great way to show appreciation, and encouragement for the things that married people do for each other. Especially the mundane things that tend to get overlooked. And most important, eventually down the line, this little act of decency will teach kids a simple lesson in gratitude. My husband is a pretty polite guy, he is born and bred in the Midwest and probably would have thanked me anyway. But  I know he takes it seriously because of what he learned in that class.

My older children have picked up on this simple ritual and have started to thank me at the end of our meals. This was a silent lesson that they learned. There were no lectures on how they should appreciate all that I do for them. No preaching about how they shouldn’t take their mother for granted. They just picked up this great habit from their Dad. That is parenting in action. The best way to teach our kids to be good, upstanding adults is to act the way we want them to act.

Let us know what kind of role modeling you do in your home that silently teaches your kids good values. Feel free to comment below.