A gratitude practice for teens that might actually work

Expect a few eye rolls

I recently read Anya Kamenetz’s piece entitled “How I Changed My Sh*tty Attitude About Gratitude” and immediately smiled. I have been working on cultivating gratitude—my own, my kids’. But we sometimes struggle because “practicing” gratitude can result in bland platitudes. I am making them be gracious; to most teens, that’s supremely annoying.

It wasn’t always hard. When they were little my kids enthusiastically played ‘mad, sad, glad’ over dinner. We found out more about their days and they learned to pinpoint and talk about their emotions. We adapted it a bit after hearing a good Adam Grant podcast: He asked his kids “what’s something kind you did for someone today?” The question signaled a value he and his wife hoped to cultivate —kindness—and steered everyone clear of overly focusing on academic outcomes - “what did you get on your biology test?”

I learned a lot about my daughters through these exercises. My youngest has an extraordinary eye for design and detail. She sees and remembers things that simply pass me by. The new coat of blue paint on the living room walls of a house four doors down, spotted through the window. The pink stripe on the brown boots that a friend wore on a walk two years ago. (She once told me I barely notice anything, and I recall thinking “it’s because I am so busy running our lives” which of course made me realize I should really try to notice more things.)

Recently we’ve been experimenting with Rose, Bud, Thorn: What’s something beautiful, something thorny and something promising from our day. I learned this from Stella, a teen in our book who told us she and her girlfriend would do this every evening as they talked deep into the night, maintaining a long distance relationship. We’ve had some good runs, but we run into some common challenges. One is that we now do them at dinner and it can feel forced. It’s the only time we consistently gather now that they are older and more independent. Sometimes, someone has an obvious rose or thorn—my books recently arrived and I was elated at the sound of the address sticker coming off and the box ripping open. But more often nothing wildly memorable happened at school, and both girls seem peeved at the interrogation and the artificial nature of the inquiry. I try to model specificity—"The deep mustard yellow of the Burford egg yolk in my fried egg this morning.” But they often respond with generalities, such as being excited for “Christmas”. I sometimes end up feeling like I am digging into their lives when they want to just eat dinner and unwind.

Which brings me back to Anya’s post. She explained that she and her dad text three things they are grateful for to each other every day. They are specific and lovely—”The cry of the grey catbird in the swamp magnolia, a sound like complaint or despair” is one example. It helps that they are both writers. As such, their exchanges can look slightly daunting. But my goal isn’t that they are deeply poetic. It’s the discipline of noticing and the search for words to capture what is striking or memorable. It’s the habit of sharing messages that are not about a pick up time or whether the dog has been fed, but about the richness of life around us.

I plan to try this in the new year, when we settle back into the darkness of London winters. Doing it by text means my girls will be able to do it on their own terms. This is the ultimate definition of meeting them where they are (on their phones, sadly). Will my kids use this chance to share the inner depths of their worlds with me? Probably not. But it feels like a way to practice gratitude which feels slightly less forced. And hopefully it’s a way for them to explore using language in whimsical ways.

Mostly what I hope it cultivates is small connections over beauty, humor, or a moment of joy. I want my kids to see what’s right in the world alongside all that’s wrong. And I hope over time they learn how much these moments of gratitude do shape how we feel about the world - rather than them becoming just an annoying-mom-exercise. My job is to help build the habit, and in the process, improve my own shitty attitude toward gratitude.