Chelsea discusses gratitude as a transformative life skill for both parents and children. Explore how to model gratitude, integrate nature into your family’s practice, and foster stronger connections and empathy in your parenting journey.
Chelsea discusses gratitude as a transformative life skill for both parents and children. Explore how to model gratitude, integrate nature into your family’s practice, and foster stronger connections and empathy in your parenting journey.
Project Parenthood is hosted by Chelsea Dorcich. A transcript is available as Simplecast.
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When we practice something we improve our skills and in turn the practice starts to become second nature to us. What if being grateful was viewed as a practice and we thought of practicing gratitude as a way to be healthier and stronger? If we can teach our children the practice of gratitude, we can in turn teach them to appreciate the world and the people around them in a more heartfelt way and give them more strength interacting in this world.
Hi! Welcome back to Project Parenthood. I am your host, Chelsea Dorcich, Licensed Marriage Family Therapist in California. I am here to join you on your conscious parenting journey bringing more curiosity, openness, acceptance, kindness and non-judgment along the way.
My goal is for us to accept what is out of our control, commit to improving our parenting life, discover better outcomes for ourselves and our family.
What comes to mind when you think of gratitude? Appreciating what you have? Saying thank you when you are given something whether it is tangible or something like kindness or consideration?
As a parent it is very easy to focus on when our children are not appearing to be grateful and not saying thank you. However gratitude involves more than just saying thank you.
Part of being grateful is being able to notice positive feelings we experience and then connecting those positive feelings to something or someone outside of us. Therefore, the first step in being grateful or expressing gratitude is to notice our emotions and then connect and identify what brought those emotions up. Lastly, reflecting on that connection and the impact it can have on us. There also may be children that verbally express gratitude in the moment and others that may feel the appreciation but not verbalize - whether it is because they show it in another way or maybe they don’t know quite how to express what they are feeling.
Research has shown that feelings of gratitude can increase dopamine and serotonin. Gratitude is a positive life skill that, like most things that bring us joy or empowerment or contentment takes time and practice and commitment. When we think of teaching our children gratitude we want them to be able to recognize what actually brings a sense of appreciation up and what brings love into their lives.
We also want to focus on the gifts that are not things, nature being a great example. My goal in bringing more practice of gratitude into my household is to bring more connection in our own family and hopefully in turn creating more connections outside of our home.
Having a practice of gratitude can bring with it contentment and a fresh perspective that focuses on what we have versus what we don't have. If our children have a perspective that focuses on having and abundance, it can be a strong skillset and tool for them to usethem use when life brings up inevitable disappointments, challenges,and changes. It also helps our children understand their connections more deeply and have more empathy and compassion not only for others but for themselves.
With the practice of gratitude we want to shift our child's focus to what they do have and not what they don't have. This shift can also help to create a more abundant worldview, bringing more notice and curiosity to what's around them as opposed to a more narrow and draining viewpointViewpoint that focuses on scarcity or lack thereof.
When our children have more gratitude they have a stronger sense of recognizing others' efforts and more empathy towards others. As a result, our children form deeper and more meaningful relationships and connections.
As parents we can model our own gratitude, our own perspective of: I have all that I need, there are gifts all around me. I'm really grateful for what I have and what I'm surrounded with. I'm very grateful for the love that I have or the family that I have. We can say this throughout our days, we can turn these affirmations into an art project and hang it up as a beautiful reminder. WhetherWether or not you celebrate Thanksgiving, this may be a great catalyst to starting a gratitude practice and being creative with how you do so.
Remember that nature is a direct link to gratitude because when our children can be grateful for our Earth and its resources they can truly understand the value of our natural world. One way to integrate more gratitude and nature as a family is to just spend time Outdoors. whether it is taking a walk, hiking, gardening or just sitting outside and observing. We have lived in homes that didn't provide as much nature or access to Nature as I would have liked and one way you can incorporate more nature into your own home environment is maybe taking the kids to the nursery and each child gets to pick out their own plant or flower. They can learn to appreciate its beauty, the amount of work it takes to keep it alive and then you also have them taking more responsibility. When you are outside there is room for conversations about how nature provides for us, whether it is water, how plants clean our air, how our food comes from trees and plants. One exercise I really love is after going on a walk or being outside you can take a picture as a family, print it out, put it on a little poster board or hang it on the fridge and each family member can record - whether through writing or drawing what they appreciated during that time outside.
One way our family likes to practice gratitude is expressing gratitude during a set time, expressing anything you're grateful for today, anything that you're grateful for in general.
Allowing there to be opportunities to encourage our children to notice more and appreciate more. this can all be done at the end of the day, at the dinner table, when you are saying goodnight or anytime where everyone can come together like at breakfast or on the drive to school. Maybe there is reflection on the day before or maybe it's just again a general I'm just feeling very grateful that we have a car to get to school today or I'm feeling very grateful that I have clothes that fit me and again this is where we as parents really model this and model the consistency of our practice in order for our children to really pick it up.
Keep in mind that gratitude is connected to nature and mindfulness and that it is not something that comes up overnight, it is a practice that takes time, effort and openness.
That’s it for this week’s edition of Project Parenthood… Remember to be curious, open, accepting, kind, and non judgmental on your conscious parenting journey. If you have any questions about this episode, about your parenting journey and/or topics you would like to hear more about please reach out to parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com or leave a message at 646-926-3243.
Project Parenthood is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips: Holly Hutchings, Davina Tomlin, Morgan Christianson and Brannan Goetschius. May you be happy, safe and protected, healthy and strong and live with ease.