What if...I want to instill gratitude in my kids?

Part 1 of 2

We don’t know about you, but sometimes the romantic haze of what homeschool could be — that best of all homeschool worlds — comes into conflict with the day to day reality.

We love our kids, but even the best of kids can act like ungrateful urchins on occasion.

So what do you do to counteract that? How do you make gratitude a part of your every day conversations during your homeschool?

• Start as you mean to go on. When it’s a struggle to get out of bed, remind yourself (and your kids) what a gift it is to wake up every morning.

• When you’re on an excursion outside the house, look for good things: drivers who use their signal lights, strangers who hold open a door, or people who say “please” or “thank you.”

• Eat together as a family as many evenings as is humanly possible. Yes, maybe you’ve already been together all day, but making a habit of starting dinner conversations with things that went well during the day is a great place to begin working on gratitude.

• Read (or re-read) those Little House books when Mary and Laura were oh so grateful for their gifts, each girl receiving a tin cup of her very own, plus peppermint sticks, tiny heart-shaped cakes, and pennies in their Christmas stockings.

• When you tuck your kids in for the night (even the big kids), ask them what their “best thing” was during the day.

And what are we grateful for today? You’ve read all the way to the bottom!

A blessed day to you all!