Building a Culture of Gratitude For Our Children

Let me tell you a true story. Last week I was at the bookshop when my wife called. “Our power is off,” she said. “There’s no electricity.”

“Huh,” I said.

“All the neighbors have electric. Did you pay the bill?”

I responded that I believed that I had.

“Well the stove is electric so I can’t make lunch for the kids. And you have the car so I can’t take them somewhere.”

“I’m coming,” I said.

About a week previously, I had gotten a notice from the electric company that payment was late. We had turned off automatic payments because we don’t always have sufficient money in our bank account. But there was money in the account, so I had clicked on the message and paid the bill. I was curious. I went back to the message and clicked through again. Aha – here was the problem. The electric company’s website automatically logged me in using the most recent login credentials. Those were for the bookshop. So I had paid a bill for the bookshop – which wasn’t late, in fact – rather than for our house. I logged out, logged in using our personal credentials, paid the bill, hopped in the car and drove up the hill.

I walked in the door and was greeted by my three year old son. “Daddy!” he exclaimed. “We have POWER!” He threw his arms into the air in jubilation. The electric had been turned on while I was walking up the stairs to the house. The effect of the whole drama, for him, was renewed joy in what we had as a matter of course.

Where does gratitude come from? It is the welcomest guest at any table. Nothing is any good without it. Yet it remains mysterious. Abundance should make us grateful – but often it does not. Perhaps poverty can teach us gratitude then – except when it doesn’t. It might be that we need to have something turned off for a while before being turned on – but it is easy enough to feel unhappy about that kind of inconstancy too.

My mother thought that advertising made us ungrateful. It certainly is designed to help us identify deficiencies. She came from an afternoon with her grandchildren shortly after Christmas. Rather than show her the presents they had gotten, they showed her the little glossy trifold inserts which had been included with the toys, showing all the other toys in the series. “They pointed out to me every single toy they didn’t have,” she said. “Can you imagine that, being a kid and being able to list every toy you didn’t have? It’s so sad. Evil, really.”

But I see personality in this more than anything. Our three year old is a miracle of gratitude. “Mommy!” he says in the morning, coming down the stairs. “I’m so happy to see you!” His smile indicates there is nothing feigned in this. It’s not clear that he was taught gratitude by his older siblings. We have one child in particular who can list every injustice she has ever suffered – they linger in her head, crammed in there so tight that if you add one more all the others will start spilling out. When she was Will’s age she was not different.

Still, we cultivate gratitude every chance we get. After praying at family meals, we circle the table and everyone answers the question, “What are you grateful for today?” At times I am disappointed – after years and years of doing this every day, my kids can still be flummoxed by the question. But I do think they are getting better at it. And one thing I think I have taught them: that they should feel grateful. That this response is to be cultivated, that this feeling is to be discussed and shared, every day.

Thirty five pounds of pure gratitude in my arms.

And at times I learn from their example. Recently our church leadership decided to destroy the landscaping around the building. It was nice landscaping – particularly two gorgeous pink flowering dogwood trees, which were marvels of their type and in the full ripeness of their young maturity, but also some lovely hydrangeas and nice green arbor vitaes. It all got pulled up, leaving nothing but a pile of dirt. Like a good parishioner I’ve asked no questions about why this happened, because there probably are no good answers. Some of God’s creatures were destroyed and nothing will bring them back. But to my three year old this is one of the greatest things ever to happen. On rainy days now he runs right out of church as soon as the last hymn starts, takes off his shoes, and plays in the mud in his church clothes. He is beaming with joy over the whole thing. And I think: gratitude, you are the thing I wish for my children.