Jeffrey Froh - Making Grateful Kids: The Science of Building Character

Templeton Press
300 Conshohocken State Road, Suite 500
West Conshohocken, PA 19428
www.templetonpress.org
2014 by Jeffrey J. Froh and Giacomo Bono
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of Templeton Press.
In some cases names have been changed to protect the identity of the people addressed in the book.
Designed and typeset by Gopa & Ted2, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.
Printed in the United States of America
14 15 16 17 18 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my wife, Cara, and children, James and Julianne,

my greatest sources of gratitude.

Jeffrey Froh

To the greatest joys of my life: my wife, Kate,

and my sons, Dario and Alex.

Giacomo Bono

Contents

INTRODUCTION

What Drives a Child Who Thrives?

M ATTHEW, a twelve-year-old middle school student who lives within a wealthy suburb, had a home life quite different than that of his peers: he and his mother had found themselves in a long-term shelter because of a financial crisis, and Matthew had to commute to school by public bus rather than the expensive cars his friends parents used to drop off their children. As winter approached, Matthew continued to come to school dressed in jeans and T-shirts with just a thin sweatshirt for covering, prompting one teacher, Mrs. Riebe, to give him a wool sports jacket from the donation bin at her church. It was a kind gesture, but a sixth grader wearing a sport jacket in a prosperous public school means one thing: a bully target. Matthew, however, wasnt bullied, nor was he embarrassed about wearing an oversized jacket. Instead, he smiled from ear to ear. Check out this cool jacket Mrs. Riebe gave me, I love it. I cant stop thanking her, hed say to his friends and other teachers. His infectious positivity was so appealing even other kids recognized and respected it.

The circumstances in which Matthew lived might make many children feel envious, cheated, angry, and resentful. Yet Matthew felt incredibly grateful to his teachers and friends because his mother, despite the constraints on her time and finances, had instilled a sense of gratitude in Matthew; and this had a profound effect on his approach to life. Weve collected nearly two thousand essays on what gratitude means to teens, Matthews essay among them. He wrote, My life wouldnt be the same without the people whove helped me succeed. Im thankful to God and my family, friends, and even my teachers for helping me improve my life.

This story of an adolescent who lives below the material standards of most of his peers and has to make much more of an effort to get to school and participate in extracurricular activities is a small but profound example of the power that gratitude can have on a young persons emotional well-being, relationships, spirituality, and success. In fact, our experience as counselors and researchers working with at-risk children and adolescents supports this assumption. But Matthew is no ordinary kid because he has learned to harness a virtue thats been long-revered, but historically underappreciated: gratitude.

What Is Gratitude?

Gratitude is the appreciation people feel when somebody has done something kind or helpful for them or when they recognize the good things and people they have in their lives. Robert Emmons defines it as a sense of thankfulness and joy in response to receiving a gift, whether the gift be a tangible benefit from a specific other or a moment of peaceful bliss evoked by natural beauty. Gratitude can be considered an emotion, a mood, or a personality trait. As a personality trait, gratitude is considered a life orientation to notice and appreciate the positive in life. Gratitude helps forge individuals character by aligning their actions with their moral feelings and beliefs in the short run and their social relationships with their goals and ultimate concerns in the long run.

When people are grateful they commonly express thanks verbally or physically (a hug or handshake, even tears) toward those responsible. Gratitude alerts people to the valuable relationships in their lives, it reinforces the kindness of their benefactors, and it motivates them to reciprocate kindness to their benefactors or even extend kindness to others. Its experience and practice promotes positive social relationships with others and nurtures trusting relationships, benefiting society at large.

Despite the major role gratitude plays in peoples well-being and success, theres been little research addressing its development and enhancement in childrens lives. Psychoanalytic theorieswhich assume that individuals must repress unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts to free up psychic energy and maturewere the first to try to explain gratitude development in children. Melanie Klein, the late Austrian-born British psychologist, wrote in her landmark 1957 book, Envy and Gratitude: A Study of Unconscious Sources, that gratitude first emerged in the earliest stages of infancy, but only if envy didnt overpower its development. Although later research hasnt supported Kleins findings, linguistic research from the 1970s and 80s found that kids spontaneous expressions of thanks increased as they mature and age.

Despite its shortcomings, the limited but pioneering research into gratitude has blazed a trail for contemporary gratitude researchers like us. After reviewing the psychological literature on gratitude in young people, we found noticeable holes that needed to be filled. One such hole was the lack of research on gratitude in the early stages of life. Until 2005, there were no studies that we knew of examining gratitude and well-being in children. Then, in 2006, psychology professors and researchers Nansook Park and Christopher Peterson conducted a content analysis of parents descriptions of childrens strengths, gratitude being one. They found that out of the twenty-four strengths examined, gratitude had the strongest relationship to life satisfaction.

Excited by this finding, Jeff contacted the worlds leading authority on gratitude, Robert Emmons, a University of California, Davis, psychology professor, to see if he would be interested in replicating an experiment that he and colleague Michael McCullough, director of the Evolution and Human Behavior Laboratory at the University of Miami, had conducted in 2003 about the beneficial effects of gratitude on adults who kept a gratitude journal. Except this time, the research participants would be adolescents. While its true that some people are inherently more or less grateful than others, we were convinced that, regardless of where you fall on the gratitude meter, gratitude could be improved because its expandable. Emmons agreed, and the replication went on to provide initial evidence that keeping a gratitude journal and counting blessings helped kids too. Soon thereafter, Emmons introduced Jeff to Giacomo (who had also been collaborating with Emmons). It was at this point that the two of us discovered our shared passion for understanding the science behind making kids more grateful, an endeavor we consider worthy given the prospect that the practice of gratitude could have lasting social and psychological benefits for a person long into adulthood.