Teaching Our Children to Say "Thank You" Shouldn't Be an Afterthought

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The Mom2Mentor podcast explores gratitude as an essential character seed to plant in our children's lives. Practicing thankfulness is a fundamental skill that parents must teach at home, not expect schools to cover.

• Recent appearance on the Tell Me Something Good podcast with Travis Patton Sr
• Gratitude means acknowledging the blessings in our lives, from food to health to safety
• Children should learn to say "thank you" without constant reminders
• Parents must model gratitude by showing appreciation in front of their children
• Create a daily practice of sharing what you're thankful for with your children
• Teaching gratitude proactively reduces the need for correcting behavior later
• Being intentional about character development is a parent's responsibility

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https://singlemomsunitedpodcast.com/

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, ladies, welcome to the Mom2Mentor podcast.
If this is your first timejoining, welcome If you are a
repeat listener.
Thank you for your loyalty.
Hey, this has been an excitingweek for me.
I've been able to participatein another interview.

(00:24):
Imagine that me, the introvert,actually going on camera on the
Tell Me Something Good podcastwith Travis Patton Sr.
So if you all do listen toListen to podcasts and you're
interested in seeing who'sbehind the voice or the face

(00:49):
behind the voice, definitely govisit his podcast.
It's very good and motivatingand it was a wonderful
experience to do.
The interview is because I'mgoing to be branching out myself
and wanting you to be on myshow, but I got to know what

(01:12):
that's.
I got to know what it feelslike sitting in the hot seat and
it was fun.
It was fun and definitelydifferent, right, but I
appreciate him asking me to beon the show and he's a fun
character and very exciting.
I learned a lot from him.
So, again, if you want to put aface to the voice, go to the

(01:38):
Tell Me Something Good podcastand the last episode is around
the weight of it all as far asbeing a single parent, and I
don't think you'll bedisappointed because there is
good content that was discussedAnyhow.
So, as these past few weeksI've been focusing on planting

(02:03):
character seeds and I've talkedabout honesty, I talked about
respect, I talked aboutcompassion.
This week I'm talking aboutgratitude.
Another word for gratitude isthank you, being thankful, right
.
So we want to plant the seed ofgratitude.

(02:23):
So we want to plant the seed ofgratitude and why it's
important.
When I was growing up, and evenwhen I was raising my kids, I
would always say when someonewould give them something, you'd
go back and say what do you say?
Having food on your table?
We should be explaining to ourkids why they need to be

(02:46):
thankful for that, becausethere's so many people out there
that do not have food to eat.
They need to learn to be sayingyou know what?
Yeah, maybe some chickennuggets or a little bit of this
or a little bit of that, but bethankful for it.
Be thankful you can still getup and put your clothes on

(03:08):
without help.
Be thankful that you can go outand play and not worry about
having an asthma attack.
Be thankful that you can seeyou can do things on your own,
because there are so many peopleout there that does not have
that opportunity like they do.
And certainly, mom, they shouldthank you If you're going above

(03:33):
and beyond and just doing thelittle things.
Or they say, mom, can I havesome ice cream?
And they don't need no icecream, but you go out there and
buy them an ice cream cone or asundae anyway.
They should be telling youthank you, yeah, and then how do
you cultivate that mom?
How do you grow that behavior?

(03:54):
Thank you for asking you.
Show that behavior.
Let your children see youthanking people.
Let them see you showinggratitude for the things that
you have.
We have to do a better job ofdisplaying more positive

(04:15):
behavior in front of ourchildren than negative behavior
in front of our children thenegative behavior.
There's enough negativity goingon in this world that we do not
need to add on to that.
But just a simple thank yougoes a long way.
I remember my stepfathertelling my kids, or educating my

(04:39):
kids, to tell me thank you.
And again it caught me offguard, right, because, wow, I'm
supposed to do this.
Right, they're my kids.
They didn't ask to be here, soI'm supposed to take care of
them, but when I saw him talkingto them and explaining to them

(05:00):
that nothing is easy and learnto be grateful and display
gratitude for everything,because we could be worse off.
If your children have a roofover their head, they have their
own bed, and even if they don'thave their own bed, they still
have a roof.
And if they're eating and theyhave clothes, it's okay to say

(05:24):
thank you.
And, matter of fact, at the endof the day, mom, one of the
things you could do is ask themwhat are you thankful for?
Tell me one thing you'rethankful for and then, after
they tell you, then you tellthem, or vice versa, maybe you
want to lead it off, to get theball rolling.

(05:47):
One thing that you're thankfulfor and maybe it could be you're
thankful that if you haveschool-age children and given
today's environment as far asschools and these school
shootings, you can say I'mthankful you got to school to
and from safely, I'm thankfulfor that, and then say what are

(06:10):
you thankful for?
And they can repeat what yousaid.
But now you got to get in thehabit of doing that.
That's how you cultivate thisright, because otherwise it's
going to fall offside andthey're going to start taking
things for granted, and we don'twant that.
We don't want our children totake things for granted, and as

(06:31):
parents, we shouldn't takethings for granted.
Always be thankful, always bethankful.

(07:01):
On the podcast show that Iattended earlier this week, I
was telling him that we have todo a better job as parents in
getting outside of thecorrecting behavior of our
children.
Right, because, like Imentioned before we talked about
, or I talked about when someonegives you something, we tell
our children.
What are you supposed to say?
We shouldn't have to do that.

(07:21):
It means to be to havegratitude, so it should be an
automatic thank you.
When someone gives themsomething, we shouldn't have to
remind them.
So I told him that if we do abetter job of teaching our
children, then we won't have todo so much correcting on the

(07:46):
back end, because we are beingproactive.
That's how you build goodcharacter, moms.
That's how you build goodcharacters.
Don't put this on the schools,because, guess what?
They're probably not eventeaching gratitude in schools.
That's probably not even partof the curriculum.
So who are they supposed tolearn this from?

(08:09):
Yeah, that's right, you, me,yeah, that's who they're
supposed to learn this from.
These are things that theschools are not going to teach
our children.
And then we wonder why, wow,these kids aren't the same like
they used to be?
Because back in the day, wewere taught to have gratitude,

(08:33):
we were taught to say thank you.
Nobody had to remind us.
Our parents didn't put that onthe schools to do, they owned it
.
And that's where we have to betoday, mom.
That's where we have to be.
We have to own responsibilityfor educating our children

(08:55):
around basic skills, basicbehaviors.
Yeah, and it's going to pay off.
That's the good news.
It's gonna pay off.
All right, ladies, briefing tothe point today, I hope you
enjoyed this episode.
If you did tell another singlemom, and also I have a survey

(09:18):
out on my website,singlemomsunitedpodcastcom, and
I would love to get somefeedback.
Did you like this episode?
If you've heard other episodes,if you liked it and if you have
ideas of other topics you'dlike for me to talk about, I'll
be happy to do that.

(09:38):
But you got to tell me.
You got to tell me.
You can also go to my YouTubechannel, moms to Mentor.
You will find all of theseepisodes out there, and I just
created a video, again comingout of my comfort zone,
promoting the Mom to Mentorpodcast.

(09:59):
So, ladies, help me, help youby going and providing some
feedback to me.
All right, I hope you enjoyedthis episode.
If you did again, tell anothermom and hopefully I'll get back
on regular production of theseepisodes by getting these out

(10:20):
weekly.
So stay tuned for next weekI'll have another character seed
that I'm going to plant andlook forward to bringing it to
you.
Have a great day.