Jeffrey J. Froh, PsyD, is a school psychologist, associate professor of psychology at Hofstra University, and the recipient of a multiyear grant from The John Templeton Foundation to study gratitude in children and adolescents. He is past associate editor for The Journal of Positive Psychology and co-editor of Activities for Teaching Positive Psychology: A Guide for Instructors. He has authored over thirty scientific articles and book chapters on gratitude, strengths, and well-being, among other topics. His research has appeared in mainstream media such as the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Woman’s Day, Family Circle, and Better Homes and Gardens. He lives with his wife, Cara, and two children, James and Julianne, in Greenlawn, New York.

Giacomo Bono, PhD, is a professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills and, along with Froh, the recipient of a multiyear grant from The John Templeton Foundation to study gratitude in children and adolescents. He has a PhD in Social Psychology from Claremont Graduate University and has extensive training and work experience involving research in health, positive psychology, youth development, and school and community programs for youth and families. With approximately twenty articles and chapters published, his research has appeared in U.S. News and World Report, the Huffington Post, Health Magazine, and Youth Radio. He lives with his wife, Kate, and two children, Dario and Alex, in La Mirada, California.

CHAPTER 1

Orienting Your Family toward Gratitude

GRATITUDE should spring from the first supportive relationships in a child's life, such as with parents and caregivers and, eventually, from other close relationships. Indeed, our research shows that youth with supportive and satisfying family and peer relationships are more grateful. Yet even in homes that actively encourage gratitude, a young person's ability to reason and accept challenging situations varies with maturity. One day, Giacomo's seven-year-old son Dario noticed his little brother Alex had been given a new toy. It quickly dawned on Dario that he didn't have the same good fortune, and he swiftly made his displeasure known to his mother. He then cried, but not without saying that it just wasn't fair—a sentiment he repeated many times. Many of you may chuckle at this scenario because you've experienced it with your kids. And there's good reason. Children argue about who has more, or better, toys. But why? Why is it so easy for kids—and adults—to focus on things to complain about?

Encourage Your Kids to Tune into Positive Emotions

Emotions give us important information about our environment. If we feel anxious, it may be because we sense a looming threat. If we feel angry, it may be because someone frustrated us or hurt us. But when we're happy, we don't always think about why. When it comes to positive emotions, we usually just enjoy the feeling because positive emotions signal to us that the current circumstances are going well, so we should just continue doing what we're doing to reap more of the same. As a result, we automatically tend to be less analytical during positive states and fail to focus on the reasons why they came to happen. During negative events, on the other hand, we tend to analyze things more. Our nature compels us to figure out why negative events transpire so that we might, in the future, avoid or prevent them entirely. While this state of affairs generally helps us survive, it doesn't necessarily help us thrive. So let's revisit Dario and Alex with this in mind.

Let's say Dario came home to discover new toys for both he and his brother. It would be easy to imagine him ripping open his gift in record time then delving eagerly into playing with it without considering why he even got the toy. This natural tendency becomes especially ingrained in adults. Like Dario, we tend to not think about why good things come our way. But if his mom first asked Dario to explain why Alex and he received toys that day, he would likely make the connection between the reward—the toys—and the boys' good behavior—cleaning up after playtime all week.

The more we understand why positive events happen for us, the easier it is to tune into possible sources of gratitude (at least when people are responsible for those events). In this example, mom helps her kids feel good for being responsible, they appreciate getting toys from her, and everybody is content with this good state of affairs. This leads us to the first strategy: capitalize on positive emotions. It can be useful with kids as young as three years old.

Strategy 1: Focus children on why good things happen to them and on the people responsible for making the good things happen.

This basic strategy helps initiate discussions with children that can help them notice and understand how others were purposefully involved in helping them. To employ this strategy, an adult and child should talk about the good things that happened during the day (or a week) and, why, in the child's opinion, those good things happened. This guides the child to notice a friend or teacher for his kindness. For example, a child might say that she learned a fun new game in school from a friend who showed her how to play. The parent can take this opportunity to suggest the child appreciate her friend for including her in the fun.

Gratitude aids humans' survival because it helps people identify the relationships that are personally more important to them than others. This strategy is useful in many settings. For instance, being thankful and appreciative of people who have been helpful and kind can easily be encouraged in school. This practice could also complement other exercises to help stoke a more cooperative classroom environment.

At home, children could think about the blessings of the day or week to come up with more thoughtful prayers. This could be done at mealtime, and our longitudinal data show that children who say grace during meals have also developed more gratitude than their peers. You could encourage children to give thanks to all the people responsible for the food on the table, which could include farmers, fishermen, truck drivers, supermarket employees, and God. You could also encourage your children during prayer at bedtime to be thankful for the people who have recently helped them or been good to them and to thank God for having such special people in their lives.

To test this strategy, Jeff and his colleagues Robert Emmons and William Sefick asked sixth and seventh graders to keep a daily journal for two weeks. The students were divided into three groups. The first group was instructed to write about five things they were grateful for; the second group was asked to focus on hassles. The third group functioned as a control, and the students in it simply completed the questionnaire administered to all three groups.

Students writing in gratitude journals made entries such as:

* "My coach helped me out at baseball practice."

* "My grandma is in good health, my family is still together, my family still loves each other, my brothers are healthy, and we have fun every day."

* "I am grateful that my mom didn't go crazy when I accidentally broke a patio table."

Students writing about hassles made entries such as:

* "I hate when people act like idiots and make fun of others."

* "I had to get up early for soccer, and we lost the game because I missed a penalty shot."

* "I feel like I'm trying so hard in school to do well but it's not enough."

Our research found that students who counted their blessings became more grateful, optimistic, satisfied with their lives and experienced fewer negative emotions. Three weeks after keeping their gratitude journals, students who counted blessings said that they were grateful for school and their education and reported feelings of greater satisfaction with their school. They also reported they were learning more and were eager to go to school.

The benefits of this change in perspective are very real. Students who are...