Gratitude may be an abstract concept, but teaching children to feel and express it can have tangible impacts. According to Children’s Hospital Colorado child and family therapist Marisa Taylor, LPC, gratitude is a valuable part of any mindfulness practice, and kids of all ages can feel its benefits — and so can parents and caregivers. 

What is gratitude?

For Taylor, gratitude is all about having the self-awareness to notice our environment and interactions with others, and to feel the positive emotions that come with appreciating someone, something or an action. 

Many kids are taught the importance of mindfulness and being present in the moment, but gratitude takes this a step further by asking ourselves: What's going on internally? What does this feel like?

Gratitude, Taylor explains, might feel like a sense of calm or love. “When practicing gratitude, we want you to be self-aware and notice that positive experience, and then acknowledge the experience to yourself and express it to others,” she says. 

This can be difficult to explain to children, especially when they are young. Taylor says she might explain it to kids as “the feeling of butterflies and your heart beating and feeling like smiling or feeling loved.”

And gratitude works both ways. It positively impacts us whether we are expressing gratitude or receiving it from someone else. 

Benefits of gratitude on mental health

When we practice gratitude, our brains release dopamine and serotonin, which increase our feelings of happiness and contentment. This is helpful and positive for people of all ages, but because kids’ brains are still forming, gratitude practices can have a significant impact.

“We are training the brain to look for positive experiences and things to be grateful for, and things that feel really emotionally good for us,” Taylor says. She adds that there is abundant research showing the value of building a gratitude practice early in life. 

“It makes people more productive if they're getting noticed in a positive light. It also helps with general emotional well-being and flourishing,” she says. “And then it helps with resiliency in general, reducing the negative impact of bad experiences.”

How to teach kids to practice gratitude

Bringing a gratitude practice into your home can be as simple as making time for kids to spend a few moments each day reflecting on things they appreciate or experiences they feel grateful for. One of Taylor’s favorite practices is asking kids to note three good things they are grateful for. Kids can save these notes and return to them later for a quick mood booster.

A daily gratitude practice can be done as a family around the dinner table or in a gratitude journal before bed. It also might fit a kid’s needs best to turn to technology. Taylor says she often encourages teens to use their smartphone’s notes app to write down their thoughts.

For young children, Taylor says books can be a great avenue to open the conversation on gratitude. In addition, modeling mindful gratitude can help toddlers and babies begin to pick up the principles of gratitude. This includes expressing gratitude often and with sincerity. For example, parents and caregivers might take extra care to thank kids, spouses, siblings and more, or they might share the thank-you notes they send to family and friends to give kids a tangible example of gratitude.

One of the most important aspects of gratitude though, according to Taylor, is leaning into details that make moments special.

“We want to get really specific,” she says. “At Thanksgiving we're saying that we’re thankful for family and friends and broad things like that. Let's get really specific about what we're thankful for instead — I am thankful that someone held the door for me, a classmate smiled at me, someone checked on me when I wasn’t feeling well.”

Of course, not every day makes us feel grateful, and things like bullying, social media and more can make it hard for kids to find that bright side. That’s why teaching them to seek out the positives is so important, no matter how small those things might be.

“We're not always talking about that huge, awesome activity that you got to do,” Taylor says. “We're talking about the little things.”