The One Simple Question We Need To Ask Our Kids Daily

Letting gratitude, as a virtue, into our lives is setting a precedent for every other virtue to follow. Do share with us how you plan to let gratitude into our lives. #joyofgratitude
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It’s that time of the year, the holiday season. You see the Christmas decorations going up all over the city. Lights, trees, all the year-end sales! There’s a buzz in the air with the slight dip in the temperature as well.

The city feels alive! The Instagram logs are talking about are the best places to be this season, the best parties to go, Christmas DIYs, for those who are travelling, bags are being packed with expectations set high of how they will end the year on a great note… and those who are in town, are making sure they have the kids and their social calendars filled out making the most out of the cheer around us all.

Soon it will be time for the New Year resolutions  and we will each have a long list of habits we want to break, or the weight we want to lose, goals we want to achieve – professionally or as a parent or even as a family, we all want to “up our game”, to do our best.

My children always have this long list of things that we need to do as a family, we set aside nights for board games, long aimless drives and jot down restaurants to visit and on a more serious note, a list of things that the children would want to achieve in the new year-hopes, dreams and aspirations.

What most of us seem to leave out is a simple thing called “gratitude”

{ noun: gratitude – the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return   kindness.}

This year we have each decided {our children and us} to make a list of things we feel gratitude for-for the simplest people in our lives, like the helpers we have at home, for maybe the life we are blessed with, the bullies we faced at work or at school, the lessons we learnt from them.

The gratitude we feel for being a part of this universe, for being able to play a pivotal role in shaping the life of someone who’s atoms are made from ours…

For being able to breathe, to feel our heart beat with passion, with purpose, with love. To feel this love, this purpose we need to feel the gratitude.

For what is this love if we are not thankful for it?

When my kids come home from school like every other mother, I ask them what their day was all about, if they had worked hard enough to get through the “to-do” for the day. I ask them what made them happy and they always mention without fail, what upset them or what made them angry or fearful even { not scoring enough on a test, unfair marking, friendship in distress, does this sound familiar??}

But we do not ask them this simple question …

 “ What did you feel grateful for today?

If we can teach our kids to include gratitude, along with all the emotions they feel daily, they will by default start noticing all the things they have to be grateful for instead of concentrating on what is missing. They {even as parents, we} will start noticing and giving thanks for the strengths they are blessed with, rather than their weaknesses.

Gratitude can transform commmon days into Thanksgiving,   turn routine jobs into joy,   and change ordinary opportunities into blessings                                                                    -William Arthur Ward

This year when my children put up the Christmas tree, the decorations that adorn our tree, will be each put up after giving thanks for something in their life, a person, a lesson, an opportunity, even a lesson learnt from a missed opportunity….

For the love and friendships, we earned during 2017 and gratitude for the hopes and dreams of 2018…

This way our entire Christmas tree big or small will be a tree of gratitude- a reminder of the love we feel when we let gratitude into our lives. Of course, we can’t just stop there, gratitude is an attitude that we need to learn as a family and find fun ways to include it in our daily lives. At least once a week lets list five things that we are each thankful for and start a conversation about it. Letting gratitude, as a virtue, into our lives is setting a precedent for every other virtue to follow. Do share with us how you plan to let gratitude into our lives. #joyofgratitude

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