Why, as a licensed Social Pathologist & mother of 4, would you encourage families to write a list of all of their blessings and share them each year at Thanksgiving?
Our four children (like most children with a fun childhood) absolutely love Halloween and would skip to Christmas if they could:) I, on the other hand, absolutely love Thanksgiving and not just because turkey with all the trimmings is one of my very favorite meals! It’s because listening to all the things our four children are thankful for is like Christmas to me!
During Passover (also a meal & a required tradition of the Jews), Jesus took bread and GAVE THANKS (Luke 22:19)!!! I imagine Jesus, our model-perfect Father, feels the same way I do, that Thanksgiving is the best start to celebrating His Birthday! He also sees the potential (like I do as a nationally licensed Social Pathologist) for parents to use the Holiday to model and teach children the spiritual skill of gratitude. His ultimate goal would be that children will eventually give-time, talents & money (advanced social-behavioral skills), from a heart filled with gratitude (spiritual skills) to God, the whole year and not just on His birthday.
The problem with many children growing up “these days” is a lack of gratitude to God for what they have. One of the problems is that in teenage culture, it has become “socially cool” to complain, be sarcastic and (bossily) tell others their opinions and what to do.
Of course, for some kids growing up, it’s not their fault! They are growing up in both a secular society as well as a secular family, without reading the bible and putting the spiritual skill of daily thanksgiving to God into practice. These kids are probably celebrating Thanksgiving by paying attention to the more secular parts of the Holiday such as who’s coming for dinner and what foods they are being served, which gives them the social opportunity to complain as opposed to giving thanks to God. Ugh!
Even in homes with Christian/Jewish parents these parents, may not know “how to” use the yearly Holiday to train the spiritual skill of being thankful to God to improve their child’s/children’s spiritual & social skills. I know our family (although we made meal times a priority) didn’t make writing down lists of what we are thankful for a tradition until more recently.
The Bible agrees with scientifically researched social training methods-that what a student thinks in their mind (receptive language skills) & heart (spiritual skills) is what comes out in his/her words and actions (expressive social-behavioral skills). So, we really can’t work on developing children’s social skills without working on spiritual skills. As both a licensed Social Scientist & mother of four, the research (& our own case studies of our four children) says daily mealtimes are the best opportunity for parents to teach social skills. I would add Thanksgiving as the best yearly opportunity to teach the spiritual skill of Gratitude (which highly impacts social skills) as a fun family bonding tradition and hands-on-learning experience.
On Thanksgiving, as our four children have been growing up, we have always gone around the table and said what we are thankful for. About 3-5 years ago, we also began having everyone write a list of 100 things they are thankful for. This year, we didn’t have an amount of things but we just said each item/person has to be very specific. For example, you can’t just say, “Dad.” You have to say the reasons you are blessed with Dad like his sense of humor, work ethic or grit, etc.
Once the lists are completed, then we share our lists with each other as we enjoy our Thanksgiving meal. This year it was brunch because we had our turkey at my in-laws:) This thankful-list-sharing helps our family bond as well as work on our social skills including appropriate turn-taking and complimenting each other. Adding this positive social activity also helps us avoid making rude comments, offering our own opinions and talking about politics or Religion;) We try and encourage everyone to talk about spirituality, not Religion. Spirituality is how Jesus is effecting me and my life. Religion and Politics talks about groups of people and has its place but, in my opinion, not at the Family Thanksgiving Table:)
Reading each person’s list out loud also jogs everyone’s memories of all the blessings we have received over the year! Inevitably, each one of us forgets 1-2 highlights, but as each person says their list out loud, it reminds us and we can add them to our own list. I know this year, I had forgotten our hike to the Hollywood sign, & visits to Griffith Park Observatory and LA Museum of the Arts. My husband remembered so I added them to my list!
Another benefit to hearing everyone’s yearly lists is you really learn the types of things your spouse or children honestly value & enjoyed. Sometimes the things we are spending money or time on are not the things our children really cared about which helps us get ideas for Christmas gifts or to plan other fun things to do together:)
In addition to teaching the spiritual skill of gratitude, writing down lists of what each person is thankful for can really begin to create a beautiful family journal of memories as a keepsake for years to come! My biological Grandmother use to tell me to write everything down and I gotta admit it always made me feel guilty! I felt so overworked when our kiddos were young! I was having trouble keeping them clean, fed and educated let alone having the time to write down as much as I would have liked! They said so so so many funny things so I know I missed stuff! I’m still hoping Jesus was and is taking video that I can watch when I get to heaven:) But of course, I really appreciate everything I did write down and I would encourage other parents to write as much down as you can (just like my Grandmother told me) because honestly if you DON’T write it down you oftentimes forget! No pressure though because the Holy Spirit’s Grace will help you remember the truly important stuff!
Another really great benefit is that when combining (Thanksgiving Lists) with last year’s Christmas Lists, Prayer Petitions & New Years Resolutions, it creates a way to scientifically measure how many of our family’s prayer requests (wants & needs) were answered! This should make everyone even more grateful to God (& others involved) in making answered prayer a reality when we have written evidence!
Something that blew me away this year was that our second child and daughter, Julia, (who is 17) said she was thankful for her opportunity to work! I had to fight back the tears since my grandfather (coming from the Great Depression), would tell us that we needed to be thankful to our employers and give them respect for the opportunity to work. I feel my husband and I have have been very grateful for our jobs and careers along our life journey. We have been hoping and praying our kids would feel the same way. The reason I thought this was difficult (as parents) to teach was because my husband and I have employed at least 20 young college graduates over the years, who (judging by their words and actions), didn’t really appreciate the opportunity we gave them. From that experience, we wanted to make sure our children appreciated whatever job they were given. We have been praying for them, having on-going conversations with them, as well as having them go out and get their own jobs with the possibility of being rejected. Yes, their was some rejection (which was difficult as a parent to watch) but this is exactly what our daughter was saying on Thanksgiving day as she read through her blessings list that because she experienced some of the rejection it made her appreciate her job:) So only through our daughter sharing her gratitude list were we able to find out that our gratitude training and prayers had been answered! I was so overjoyed that she “got the gratitude lesson” that I was trying to hold back tears and also thinking I needed to add this to my list of things I’m thankful for!