Attitude of Gratitude
From an Associated Press article “Teach Teens to Have an Attitude of Gratitude” in The Oregonian, November 17, 2009: In response to kids who are ungrateful and display a sense of entitlement, a social worker, family therapist and professor of psychology claim that parents share the blame in creating an entitled teenager.
“Parents should require them to make genuine, meaningful contributions to the family and set consequences if they don’t.” Parents need to show their children “what it takes to make a household work or a society work.” Parents need to involve their children in the daily runnings of the house and family. “Parents used to teach kids to earn. Paper routes, shoveling snow – they did all those things to earn money to develop some type of work ethic. Now, instead of having them earn, they’ve been handed everything…Studies show that adolescents who report feeling gratitude are ‘more optimistic, less materialistic, less envious and less depressed’”.