How to Help Children (and Adults) Say "Thank You"

Or How to Help You be Thankful too!

It's the worst part of winter right now. The days are still short, still to cold to play outside every day, and there is no Christmas to be excited about. We are living in dreary dark days and needing graciousness for one another.

I don't think most of us enjoy haranguing our sons and  daughters to say "thank you." Repetition, groans, eye rolls, and not genuine thankfulness all go with making kids say "thank you."

But I noticed something early on with my firstborn is that I didn't have to prompt him very much to say "thank you" if I was consistently using it like I should. I also noticed when I stop, look a child in the eye and give them an unexpected encouraging word, they encourage each other in the same way.

How to Help Children Learn the Lord's Prayer

Recently, we have been helping our 5 and 3 year old memorize the Lord's Prayer. Our church says the Prayer together every week and learning it is a way to further involve our children in our church service. Don't misunderstand, I don't believe that by my children learning the Lord's Prayer, it will magically create in them awesome faith or faith at all. It won't solve all our problems or make my kids perfect. But it is a discipline, and a wonderful passage of Scripture they can fall back on.

I started working on it with our 5 year old, but did not expect the 3 year to memorize much. Wow! He surprised me, the 3 year old has the Lord's Prayer better memorized than his older brother.

My husband and I started out by incorporating the Prayer into our bedtime routine with the kids. The kids would say parts of it, but were not excited about it.

Nighttime Blessing for my Daughter

My daughter turned 9 months old yesterday. Our third child, our first girl. We love her, her big brothers love her and we think she is the cutest thing ever. And she is! But I want her to know she is so much more than that.