One of the strategies to “non-entitle” children is for parents to teach and encourage gratitude. There are several great suggestions in the article “11 Strategies to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Entitled” on the MindBodyDad blog site.
Suggestions include thank you notes, reflections, and the articulation of things to be thankful for.
This past Christmas, I gave my wife, Cindy, a blessings jar. I wrote some blessings–like Cindy, my loving wife–on a strip of an index card I had cut up, and placed them in the jar. She was pleasantly surprised to read my notes in the jar. It was the best present I gave her, IMHO. (A warmer for her daily mug of tea was a close second.)
Since Christmas, we have stuffed the jar with things we are grateful for. On the last day of January, Cindy and I sat together and went through the jar, reading messages like “Cindy’s chicken cutlets,” “Our medical care,” “Playing games with the grands.”
We bagged up January’s blessings and have been filling the jar with February blessings. It is always a good thing to count your blessings as a form of gratitude. As the article says, “Gratitude and entitlement sit on opposite ends of a seesaw—they cannot coexist. Gratitude flourishes through appreciation, while entitlement grows from expectation.”
The blessing jar has been a blessing.
Encourage gratitude.
The Q-View 