30 Days of Thankful: Reunions

I missed posting this yesterday because we were too busy enjoying it! Jenny and Bill arrived from Seattle for Thanksgiving. Hooray! 

The kids hadn't seen Jenny since February, and Bill since October 2010. (I got to see both of them earlier this Spring when I went up there.) Since Alex was just a baby the last time Bill was home, he was obviously a little leery of this "stranger" Uncle Bill, but it's not taken long for him to warm right up.

My whole family will be together this week, the first time in three years. We have big plans that involve the beach, fun games, and delicious food. So looking forward to it!

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"6 Reasons Why to Teach Kids to Be Grateful" from Ann Voskamp

1. Better Attitudes:

• Children who practice grateful thinking have more positive attitudes toward school and their families

2. Better Achieve Personal Goals:

• Participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal and health-based) over a two-month period compared to subjects in the other experimental conditions.

3. Closer Relationships, Greater Happiness:

• Professors infused middle-school classes with a small dose of gratitude and found that it made students feel more connected to their friends, family, and their school: “By the follow–up three weeks later, students who had been instructed to count their blessings showed more gratitude toward people who had helped them, which led to more gratitude in general. Expressing gratitude was not only associated with appreciating close relationships; it was also related to feeling better about life and school. Indeed, compared with students in the hassles and control groups, students who counted blessings reported greater satisfaction with school both immediately after the two–week exercise and at the three–week follow–up.”

4. Better Grades:

• 6-7th graders who kept a gratitude journal for only three weeks, had an increased grade point average over the course of a year.

5. Greater Energy, Attentiveness, Enthusiasm:

• A daily gratitude intervention (self-guided exercises) with young adults resulted in higher reported levels of the positive states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy compared to a focus on hassles or a downward social comparison (ways in which participants thought they were better off than others).

6. Greater Sensitivity:

• Children who kept gratitude journals were more sensitive to situations where they themselves can be helpful, altruistic, generous, compassionate, and less destructive, more positive social behaviors, and less destructive, negative social behaviors.

Research from Robert Emmons, Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier