Gratitude & Kindness Read Online Free PDF Page A

glass to be full, and I want you to fill it!”
    People describe entitlement as an ugly characteristic. Children we have spoken to say they do not like the feeling that comes with taking things for granted. It is frustrating for parents and unflattering when noticed by others in the community. The good thing is that feeling like you have a “right” to something is a learned behavior—which means it can be unlearned.
    Commonreactions to the word “NO”:
    If you think your child might have caught the Entitlement Bug , these will likely be their reactions to you saying “NO!”
Disbelief: “You’re kidding right?”
Confusion: “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
Anger: “I hate you.”
Pleading: “Pleeeease…I’ll do dishes for a week.”
Rejection of parent: “I wish Joey’s parents were my parents.”
    Entitlement Talk that further proves that your child has likely been infected with the Entitlement Bug:
All the other children have one.
You never said NO before.
It’s so unfair.
I deserve it.
You owe me.
Why are you so mean?
    Why Perspectives Need to Change
    It is easy to not think about what you have, and who really means something to you, when you are a child. This is why children rarely discover gratitude on their own. Instead, they tend to focus on what they do not have and people they do not know. This can develop into a perspective that is overwhelmed with feelings of sadness, deficiency, or inadequacy.
    Gratitude is not about appeasing the people that are giving. It is about introducing your children to a better way of living their lives, one that will bring them closer to other people, and make they themselves happier. Gratitude really can transform our lives, but only if we bring it out and dust it off regularly, instead of just once a year on Thanksgiving holidays.
    We hope this book does enough to change your perspective on gratitude that you start to take it seriously as well. Young children will always respond if they see their parents engaging in a gratitude-based action. When you are grateful for what you have, you reach out to others to express your appreciation for them.
    Words Versus Emotions: The Difference
    Parents confuse words such as “thank you”, with emotions such as gratitude. Whereas gratitude is a state of being, like happy or sad, a simple “thank you” does not have to have any gratitude tied to it at all. In children, most “thank you”s are said because they are expected, not because they mean anything.
    How do you teach your children the difference between saying “thank you” and meaning thank you? Easy! Put them at the receiving end. When a child spends time working hard on something for you, all they want to hear is Mom or Dad’s thanks.
    Did your own parents ever try to get you to appreciate things by telling you about starving children in Africa, or people without fresh water in India? These anecdotes don’t translate the meaning you intend. Children need more of an experiential understanding of what you’re talking about. You may have briefly felt sad for those children, but your life circumstances wouldn’t have allowed for you to fully understand their circumstances, so it likely shot out of your mind as quickly as it entered.
    In this instance, it is always better to show your children what you mean. For example, imagine the situation where you are driving home with your child and you both comment on being hungry enough to eat a horse. You let your child know that there are no snacks in the car and that it will be half an hour until you get home. Take the gratitude-boosting opportunity to talk about how good the snack will be when you get home, and say, “Being hungry sometimes makes the snack taste better, doesn’t it?”

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    Where Does Entitlement Come From?
    “So much has been given to me; I have no time to ponder over that which has been denied.”
    [helen keller]
    Entitlement is a state that naturally develops when life’s checks and balances are not