CLEVELAND — 3News’ Danielle Wiggins talked to Dr. Emily Mudd, pediatric psychologist at Cleveland Clinic Children's about teaching your kids gratitide -- even during this difficult time.
“The holidays are different this year. A lot of us are not getting together with family members, so kids may be kind of upset.”
Danielle asked, “What advice would you have for us to help our kids see the positive and to be grateful during this time?”
“The most important thing to raising grateful children, is to be a grateful parent,” says Dr. Mudd.
She says it’s important for parents to display gratitude at home.
“Having a specific time for a gratitude ritual. Whether it's at dinner, before bedtime, in the morning, where you really have a time to say things that you're grateful for outside of the gift-giving process.”
Dr. Mudd also says one thing parents can do is ask their kids to express things they are grateful for that are not materialistic.
“Who are we grateful for? What in nature are we grateful for? And really widening the amount of things that we can be grateful for,” says Dr. Mudd.
She says this is a good exercise for adults to do as well, because we're having similar emotions.
Dr. Mudd also says it's important to share those feelings to your children.
"We may not be able to buy expensive gifts this year, we may not be able to see our family and those are huge losses. We need to acknowledge that and we can also feel that we're grateful to have our health, to be able to have a dinner at home with our family.