RE-RELEASE: Why isnt my child grateful with Dr. Jonathan Tudge
\u201cI spent the whole morning painting and doing origami and felting projects with my daughter \u2013 and not only did she not say \u201cthank you,\u201d but she refused to help clean up!\u201d (I actually said this myself this morning:-))\n\n\u201cWe took our son to Disneyland and went on every ride he wanted to go on except one, which was closed, and he spent the rest of the trip whining about how the whole trip was ruined because he didn\u2019t get to go on that one ride.\u201d (I hope I never have to say this one\u2026I\u2019m not sure I could make it through Disneyland in one piece.)\n\n \n\nYou might recall that we did an episode a while back on\xa0manners, and what the research says about teaching manners, and how what the research says about teaching manners comes from the assumption that manners MUST be explicitly taught \u2013 that your child will NOT learn to say \u201cthank you\u201d unless you tell your child \u201csay thank you\u201d every time someone gives them a gift.\n\nWe also talked about how parent educator Robin Einzig uses the concept of \u201cmodeling graciousness\u201d and that if you treat other people graciously, when your child is ready, she will be gracious as well.\xa0 The problem here, of course, is that most people expect your child to display some kind of manners before they are developmentally ready to really understand the concept behind it.\n\nBut what really underlies manners?\xa0 Well, ideas like gratitude.\xa0 Because when we train children to say \u201cthank you\u201d before they are ready to do it themselves they might learn to recite the words at the appropriate time, but they aren\u2019t\xa0really experiencing gratitude.\n\nDr. Jonathan Tudge\xa0of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro tells us much more about this, and how we can scaffold our child\u2019s ability to experience gratitude, if we decide we might want to do that.\n\nDr. Tudge\u2019s book,\xa0Developing Gratitude in Children and Adolescents\xa0(co-edited with Dr. Lia B. L. Freitas) contains lots more academic research on this topic if you\u2019re interested.\n\n \n\nReferences\n\nHalberstadt, A.G., Langley, H.A., Hussong, A.M., Rothenberg, W.A., Coffman, J.L., Mokrova, I., & Costanzo, P.R. (2016). Parents\u2019 understanding of gratitude in children: A thematic analysis. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 36, 439-451.\n\n
\n\nKiang, l. Mendonca S., Liang, Y., Payir, A., O\u2019Brien, L.T., Tudge, J.R.H., & Freitas, L.B.L. (2016). If children won lotteries: Materialism, gratitude, and imaginary windfall spending. Young Consumers 17(4), 408-418.\n\n
\n\nMendonca, S.E., Mercon-Vargas, E.A., Payir, A., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2018). The development of gratitude in seven societies: Cross-cultural highlights. Cross-Cultural Research 52(1), 135-150.\n\n
\n\nMercon-Vargas, E.A., Poelker, A.E., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2018). The development of the virtue of gratitude: Theoretical foundations and cross-cultural issues. Cross-Cultural Research 52(1), 3-18.\n\n
\n\nMokrova, I.L., Mercon-Vargas, E.A., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2018). Wishes, gratitude, and spending preferences in Russian Children. Cross-Cultural Research 52(1), 102-116.\n\n
\n\nNelson, J.A., Freitas, L.B.L., O\u2019Brien, M., Calkins, S.D., Leerkes, E.M., & Marcovich, S. (2013). Preschool-aged children\u2019s understanding of gratitude: Relations with emotion and mental state knowledge. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 31, 42056.\n\n
\n\nTudge, J.R.H., & Freitas, L.B.L. (Eds.) (2018). Developing gratitude in children and adolescents. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press.\n\n
\n\nWang, D., Wang, Y.C., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2015). Expressions of gratitude in children and adolescents: Insights from China and the United States....