Encouraging gratefulness?

Kali and I spent last weekend in Mount Joy, PA visiting family and friends while Jason attended a Bioneers Conference and visited his sister in Pittsburgh, PA.

We spent a good part of the weekend with one of my closest girlfriends from growing up years and her family. We were helping them unpack from a recent move back to her home place, playing with her three children, and the two of us filling in every possible crack with our catching up! I could write a lot about how wonderful the weekend was for me, but I just want to share one snippet. It was a weekend that included some insightful moments for me as I spent more time noticing and playing with Kali and all the children around me.

Here's one story from the weekend:

The parenting discussion group we are a part of spent one night a few months back talking about manners. How do we encourage our children to act in ways that are socially acceptable in our culture? Should that even be a goal? What are appropriate ways to achieve that goal if you are attempting to model respectful parenting?

We talked a fair amount that evening about saying "thank you" and how to have our children show gratitude. It seemed that the consensus there was that modeling is much more important than requiring (which likely would involve some coercion) our children to say or do something particular to show they are grateful for a gift or kind gesture.

So I've been thinking about it and trying to practice. Well, Kali was having a lot of fun at E's house with a certain plastic caterpillar whose legs were the letters of the alphabet and which played all kinds of music. But we needed to get on the road and so she suggested that she could borrow the toy. It seemed impractical to borrow a toy in PA and take it to VA, but since I knew that E found this particular toy annoying, I told Kali I would go ask if it is was okay. E was happy to have us take it (likely for good!).

Kali was very excited when I shared this news with her. I then suggested that she might want to think of a way to express to E how she felt about this gift. She seemed to think that was a good idea but as we walked out to where E was, I asked if she wanted to say something to her and she quickly said to me "you tell her." This is where I'm often tempted to say something like, "No, it was a gift for you so you need to tell her" or "You are six years old and can talk" or "I want you to practice showing that you are thankful when people give you things..." None of those kinds of comments had been all that helpful in the past and our conversations with parents trying alternate ways of being with their children had made quite an impression on me. So I thought quick and responded, "What would you like me to tell E for you?" Kali didn't think long before piping up, "Just tell her whatever you were expecting me to say."

I laughed and inwardly groaned. It is so wonderful when children give such clear messages as this one - she hadn't been learning the benefit of being authentic and feeling thankful. Sadly instead it seemed she was learning that there was something she was "supposed" to say and then we would leave her alone... We had a very good conversation about it and in the end I communicated to E that Kali felt "good" having received the wonderful noise-making plastic caterpillar.