Teaching your kids to be thankful may just be a prayer away…
The first time I remember making it a heart-goal to teach our children appreciation began this way …
At our son’s 6th birthday party, during the gift opening portion:
Son: (wildly tearing at the paper) What is it? Oh it’s a battleship. My Grammy already got me this.
Then, he opened the next gift.
Son: (pulling off the bow and paper, tossing the card aside, unread): A Nerf gun! My Grammy got me one of these just last week.
In front of all the parents and children watching, I wanted to die then and there on the spot. My son needed to learn better manners. He lacked basic appreciation for not only gifts, but also cards, which were carefully chosen or made just for him. And my mom needed to stop buying him gifts every week—that would be the harder part for me to work out, which I shall address in another post on The M.O.M. Initiative.
So I began to pray, “Lord, You say that if any of you lacks wisdom, we should ask You. Here I am, asking. We need to teach our children thankfulness and appreciation. Though we can model it all day long, they still get to choose to be grateful or not. Help us, please.”