Help Your Grandchildren Give Thanks

When you gather around the holiday table, follow these tips to help grandchildren express their gratitude

by Charlotte Latvala

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Thanksgiving is about more than turkey and football. With family gathered around the table, it's a time for grandparents and grandchildren to open their hearts and talk about their blessings. "Research shows that one of the key predictors of a happy life is a sense of gratitude," says Aaron Cooper, a clinical psychologist with The Family Institute at Northwestern University and coauthor of I Just Want My Kids to be Happy: Why You Shouldn’t Say it, Why You Shouldn’t Think it, What You Should Embrace Instead (Late August Press, 2008). "Feeling grateful helps us stop comparing ourselves to others — and always desiring more than we have."

This holiday season, follow these tips to get your grandchildren talking about the things they're thankful for:

Be a role model. It's easier for children to express gratitude if you show them how to do it — so go first when it's time for the "I'm thankful for..." discussion at your table. "You can share something you're grateful for today, and then something that happened a long time ago,” Cooper says. "Not only do you promote the practice of giving thanks, you get a chance to tell an interesting story of the past, which grandkids love to hear." Learning family lore — such as anecdotes about their parents as children — helps grandchildren feel part of a rich, ongoing family story, he says. "Stories from long ago help anchor grandkids into a world larger than themselves, a kind of antidote to the self-focus our culture promotes nowadays."

Stand tall. When Carol White, 61, a grandmother of nine in Wilsonville, Ore., and her family go around the table sharing their blessings at Thanksgiving, she asks each speaker to rise. "Standing shows respect, and it helps you project your voice," says White, the co-author of Live Your Road Trip Dream (RLI Press, 2008). "The first time, it is difficult, but as the years go on, the kids become more and more comfortable standing up and saying something meaningful." White's family loved her take on the tradition so much that they started including similar rituals in other holiday celebrations; on July 4, for example, they have asked each other, "What does the Fourth mean to you?"

Add a ritual. You don't literally need to be sitting around the dinner table to talk about thankfulness. Sue Johnson, 68, a grandmother of five in Lancaster, Va., and coauthor of Grandloving: Making Memories with your Grandchildren (Heartstrings, 2003) started a tradition of giving thanks before sitting down. Her family gathers before the meal in her kitchen, around the turkey and its fixings, with each person holding a small candle. "One by one, we light the candle from the previous person and say something we’re grateful for," she says, and the candlelight makes the moment feel more solemn and meaningful: "When the children are old enough to hold the candle with adult supervision — usually around 4 years old — it’s really special to them."

Record the cute stuff. As the discussion moves around the table, the youngest children may come up with comments that are touching, insightful, or, just as likely, hysterical, whether they're thankful for pumpkin pie, the family dog, or the number that is the same day as their birthday. But it's easy to forget their adorable remarks from year to year. So social psychologist Susan Newman of Metuchen, NJ, the author of Little Things Mean a Lot: Creating Happy Memories With Your Grandchildren (Crown, 1996), recommends keeping a Thankfulness Journal that you update each year. "By writing down what everyone says each year, you see the enormous differences in the seriousness of content as the grandchildren grow up," Newman says. She recommends that after children offer their thanks, you refer to the journal and read to them the comments they made when they were little, to spark further discussion.

Similarly, Sue Johnson's family writes thankfulness scrolls each Thanksgiving. "They start out with the words, 'You make me happy when you...'" Johnson explains. "You can do one for each person, or draw names [at random] so that each person makes and receives one scroll." Family members exchange the scrolls after dinner, guaranteeing lots of smiles during dessert, and warm memories to last until the next November.

To hear from a grandmother who is tired of hosting Thanksgiving each year, click here. To hear from a grandmother who doesn't want to stop hosting, click here. Elsewhere on Grandparents.com, find out if you need to tighten up or lighten up with your grandchildren this season, join the debate over whether it's appropriate to take grandchildren hunting, and learn how to get along with the "other" grandparents during the holidays.