And I think that, you know, one of the keys for me, Wayne, would be to be grateful for the things we can be grateful for. Because if we're not grateful for the things we can be grateful for, then every day feels like a hard You know, in our house, we have this policy. You're just thankful. We're thankful for things. We just thank people for helping us, for being around, for making a meal that maybe we didn't really like. We just want to be grateful people. But what if
our kids aren't grateful? How do we guide them to that? It can be a really dark place for parents sometimes, especially as we're trying to guide our kids to that reality. And gratefulness actually is a chief quality and characteristic that is really important in life. Well, today on the Celebrate Kids podcast, in this daily segment, Facing the Dark, Dr. Kathy goes at this. How do we drive our kids to gratefulness? And how do we build thankfulness maybe in our own hearts? So let's turn now to Dr.
Don't be afraid of the dark. Be careful with stars. Not every light is gonna guide you, You know, Dr. Cathy, in a new episode of her podcast, former First Lady Michelle Obama says that she grew up thankful, but that kids today are significantly less thankful. In the podcast episode, she says, quote, our parents worked hard enough without us fighting and causing havoc. We knew our parents were working as hard as they could. We knew that they were giving as much as they could. I guess we grew
up grateful. What we had has a lot of gratitude for a little bit that we did have. So it was sort of like, what was there left for us to be fighting about?" End quote. You know, Dr. Kathy, she's talking to her brother in this episode and kind of recounting that she was really, and he was really kind of maybe a thankful generation is what she's kind of ascribing to how she approached things. And that there was a lot more gratitude back then, but kids today
really are less thankful. And now I want to push back on this a little bit, because I think we look back at childhood with rose colored glasses. But if we really took time to remember, I bet we could all think of some really hard and challenging times that we don't want to remember. We want to think that our childhood or that we were totally different or exceptional. Sometimes I think that we're really thankful for the upbringing that we had, and we
kind of want to highlight that, even if it wasn't that great of an upbringing. Why is it important for us to not say, well, kids should just be more thankful and maybe to work through some harder relational things that we have with our kids and think, especially when we think that they might just be acting out. You know, I think that it might be bad for us to make everything look like it was great
back then and you guys should be grateful now. Should we be people that kind of dig down into the dirt and say, oh yeah, I remember when I wasn't grateful or I wasn't thankful. Is I think so because it helps them realize that they're not terrible people when they have days or even a week. where they're not grateful and they get into that, you know, negative critical headspace. So yeah, you're right about the rose colored glasses. We can choose to forget. And there's,
there's a benefit of choosing to forget hard times. I mean, I think in the moment, I pray that we would learn from it and rise up and walk out of the valley experiences and, you know, benefit in maybe a variety of ways. As we look back, we realized that. I don't think it's healthy to look back on all the negativity unless there's a, a motivational, encouraging reason to maybe do so. But for our kids to understand, we did have hard times. You know, we maybe don't talk about them all, but
yes, we had hard times and look, we've lived through them. And not only did we live through them, we benefited from them. And I think that, you know, one of the keys for me, Wayne, would be to be grateful for the things we can be grateful for. Um, because if we're not grateful for the things we can be grateful for, then every day feels like a hard day. And that's certainly not true. I also think that, um, back in the day, because we
didn't have social media proclaiming the bad days. You know, where people now can post a real and almost reels and Facebook posts and other things are the highlight reels of the beauty of the day. But there are people who certainly. Post about, you know, the, the traffic and, you know, the boss running late or the kid getting sick at the inappropriate day. You know, there are people who celebrate the negativity and want, want
the sympathy and the empathy and the pity party to be well attended. I think back in the day. Because we didn't have social media access to proclaiming what is good and what is bad. We didn't know as much. My dad lost his job when I was, I'm thinking I was a early middle school, early junior high, maybe a seventh grader. If I remember right, it's not terribly important, but he lost his job. He, he found one. It was actually better. It
was an interesting experience. But I think if we asked my brother, he would agree with me. I don't remember that being hard. Like he didn't come home, he didn't stay home and like confuse us with why he was home. They, I don't ever, I don't remember any discussions about money. If, if my parents cut back in some way, I don't remember that it wasn't, it didn't feel like a hardship to me.
Whereas I think today, maybe because of the environment, there's more awareness for children of the difficulties and that could be That's a hard reality, Dr. Cathy. I think that as parents, we can carry that weight of how do we live honestly in this moment, but also not cause our kids to really be confused. What does it do also for our kids? I mean, is it helpful for us to project how we were kids onto our kids? I think that our kids are different than us. We want to say that they're the
same, but they really are different. And so I grew up playing sports every day after school, all the time. I've got like five kids right now that have no interest in athletics. They don't really care about it. They don't want to play sports. You know, we have eight children, Dr. Kathy, that's way over half. Well, one over half, but it's, it feels like a lot more, but they're
just not in that mode. And it can be natural for me to say, okay, guys, we have to go out and throw the ball, or we have to go out and play baseball, or we have to go and you guys should be involved in summer league. And that's just not really their interest. Is it healthy for us to project our own upbringing and kind of how we grew up onto our kids to try to get them to, you know, have the same appreciation or Yes and no. You know, as you know, they're creating God's
image, not yours. And so we do need to give children freedom to develop their talent, expertise, and interest. And, and yet, and I respect that you do that really well, Wayne. And yet we want them to have connections to us. We want there to be, uh, um, some similarities in family. You know, my whole family, we're all green red Packer fans and we live in different cities, but we have this long text thread during the NFL, you
know, season and, you know, Christmas. You know, and there is not, there's not a Christmas that we don't give green and gold something to at least, you know, one person. And, and so that makes it fun. It's a way that our family connects. We have memories and we have, we can think back to our parents who have been with the Lord for many, many, many years. and their joy of the Packers and hanging out with us as well as we would watch games together and have the Packer buffet.
We have, oh my goodness, I could go on and on. And then that's fun, right? It connects the family. The littles begin to wear Packer sweatshirts because grandpa, you know, wears a Packer sweatshirt. And so there is value in connection, memory building and traditions. And yet we don't force, you know, something like, you know, you have to throw the football. So I think there's freedom in that. Yeah, I hope my answer makes sense. We
Yeah, we totally agree and understand that. Dr. Cathy, one of my sports-loving kids, we actually You know let them stay up super late the other night when the Timberwolves were playing because we just said you need to watch this game It's really important. I don't know why it's important. It's important to me So we're gonna watch it together, but totally broke all the I'm sure he was like useless in school the next day But it was it was one of those things or it
was like hey, we're connecting over this thing. You're a you're a Minnesota fan I'm a Minnesota fan. We're gonna do this thing. It was it was really special and But I want to change gears here a little bit, because you talk a lot about gratitude in your character book. And the interview that Michelle Obama was talking about was really about being thankful for the things that we have. I want to know a little bit, why should we be working hard to
instill gratitude in our kid? That's a primary quality that Yeah, I love that question. Yeah. It's the first character quality of the 48 in the book and of the baker's dozen 13. I named it number one for three reasons. First, if, if you're a believer, there's so much to be grateful for, to be grateful to God for created us, but he didn't have to, he had loved to share. He had to make people, but he didn't have to make you and he didn't have to make you, you. So to be
grateful to God for his choice to intentionally create you. And then grateful to Jesus Christ, who went to the cross and took your sin upon himself, that you would have freedom on earth and eternal life inhabited with him forever. To be grateful for that, to not be entitled. And then third, to be grateful to the Holy Spirit, who is a gift and a companion and a constant connection, right? And the convictor and the teacher and all those things that the Spirit is.
So grateful, I think gratitude should be a defining attribute of a believer. where we are very acutely aware of the sacrifice of Christ on a regular basis and we don't waste it. We want to live an abundant life because Jesus died that we would have one. A second reason that I named gratitude as the first primary quality is that it's what we call a parent virtue. It gives rise to other qualities. The research and even Bible verses would show us that grateful people are joyful people.
Grateful people tend to be other-centered. They get their eyes off of themselves more readily. Grateful people are kind and patient and able to hang with even the disgruntled naysayer. So I think that's an important reason for gratitude to be celebrated in the family. And the third reason is also key, and that is that technology has taught us to be entitled. There's probably no parent listening who hasn't just groaned. You know, kids are entitled today.
You know, they want what they want when they want it now because their apps have taught them they can have what they have. Right? Like I, I tell the story of being four and a half miles from an Amazon distribution center. That's both good and terrible because if I order something at noon, I want it by age and how dare they not have the product in stock in that distribution warehouse
that I, why didn't you know I was going to order that? And we can develop such a prideful, arrogant, egotistical, entitled attitude, which does not make Jesus look good. So gratitude, because it's the exact opposite of the cultural wind of being, being entitled. So yeah, to celebrate and to want to have gratitude and it's not forced. Thank you notes. It's who we are, not what You know, Dr. Cathy, that's exactly, I think, where Michelle Obama was getting to.
But when somebody doesn't have a gracious heart or isn't thankful, all that we can do, it seems like, is to just complain. Oh, man, I wish you were more grateful or I wish you were more thankful. And I think we can even do that with our kids, you know, at dinnertime. you know, thank your mom for your, for the food. And then sometimes, like it was last night in our house, it's not like, oh, this is my favorite meal. So, you know, through gritted teeth, it's okay. Thank you, mom. You know, could
have made me pizza, but you made this. It's okay. You know, but I want to know a little bit, how do we guide our kids to be more thankful? How can we give them the tools or Such a good question. We have to model it, you know, and we could answer so many questions here with that, right? We have to model it as the adults who are influential grandparents, teachers, pastors, Sunday school, moms and dads to again, express gratitude
to talk about how differently things could have gone. You know, do you have a habit, for instance, in the car, if you see an ambulance or you see an accident, do you pray in the moment? For the people who were involved and then do your children hear you say, and father, thank you for protecting us that we were not on the highway at that time. So do we look for those teachable moments and those true moments when we should be grateful and do we verbalize it? I think that can
be a really powerful thing. I believe that we could study missionaries who have gone without so that they can serve the Lord in hard places and even in easy places and celebrate their choices and look at their attitudes of gratitude. We can certainly look at, you know, Bible illustrations as well. I think we look in our culture and we ask, how would this have been different if people would have been grateful? Right?
Like, let's say that you're out in a mall, you're at a movie, you know, lobby waiting for the doors to open, or, you know, you're serving and there are people complaining that their parents made them serve, but you've told your children no verbalization of negativity today. That's not who we are. And then you talk about, did it, did it change you to not verbalize negativity? And You know, as Dr. Kathy was talking today, it reminded me of a passage that comes out of Luke
chapter 17, and I'll begin reading at verse 11. Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. And as he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, Jesus, Master, have pity on us. When he saw them, he said, Go, show yourself to the priests. And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw
that he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him, and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner? Then he said to him, Rise and go. Your faith has made you well. You know, as Luke recounts, Jesus healed 10 lepers, people who lived isolated, helpless, hopeless lives, really due to their disease. But only one,
a Samaritan, returned to thank Him. Jesus noted his faith and his gratitude and said, your faith has made you well, implying that there was deeper spiritual restoration and peace that happened beyond just the physical healing. I think that as parents, we can take this story and maybe make it grow inside of our kid. We can cultivate in them that gratitude draws us closer to Jesus, while ingratitude often keeps us distant. I think we can encourage our kids to say thank you to God out loud, and
maybe to write or speak their words of thanks often. Using a journal or different dinnertime gratitude conversations can really help build that. It's a practice that many of us have at Thanksgiving, but what if we turned it on during the week too? What if we did the high, low, buffalo, and thankful? I think that that could be a bright light that helps some kids start to shine and cut through some of the darkness that might be overshadowing them, that they might not even realize they're
dwelling in. As a special note, this episode really does celebrate some of the things that Dr. Kathy talks about in her book, Parent Differently. I would encourage you to go to her website, maybe pick it up and read it. There's some great insights in it that I think could be really helpful as you're looking to build character, not only maybe in your kids, but also in you. You can find that at
CelebrateKids.com. I want to thank you for listening to this episode of the Celebrate Kids podcast, the daily episode facing the dark. On behalf of Dr. Kathy Cook, my name is Wayne Stender. So