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Hello, I’m Patrick McMillan. I’m the creator of Kidscandoanything.com and the author of An Exercise in Happiness—an emotional growth in character education program for kids in 3rd to 5th grade.

I want to thank you for being here for our first in an ongoing series of video articles designed to give you some valuable information and some tips as to how to instill emotional intelligence into your kids, both at home and in the classroom.

I’m coming to you today from beautiful Red Rocks Park. Red Rocks Amphitheater is known throughout the world as one of America’s most beautiful places to be and it’s certainly a place to be grateful for. In fact, that’s what today’s article is all about. It’s how to help your children instill an attitude of gratitude and by doing so, they will reap benefits that will last a lifetime.

The concept of gratitude has been talked about for thousands of years. In fact, Marcus Cicero, the great Roman statesman wrote in a 100BC that gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, it’s the parent of all virtues. Every religion on earth has talked about the power of gratitude and regarded gratitude as an integral part of living a happy and fulfilled life.

Well, scientific research over the past 20 years in positive psychology has verified that the benefits received from thinking grateful thoughts and journaling those thoughts, the benefits are massive and far outweigh the effort that goes into receiving those benefits. Benefits like less illness, living a longer life, having a longer lasting and more meaningful relationships, more success at school and in business, and an increased level of overall life satisfaction.

So by giving your children the gift of developing a habit of gratitude is giving them happiness. Every parent I’ve ever asked, what do you want most for your child has always responded with the word happiness. And this is certainly one way to provide that for your child.

The tips I have for you today, the first one is to create a gratitude journal for yourself and for your children. Have them create their own. Get a three-ring binder and decorate the cover and call it My Gratitude Journal and every day, sit with your child at breakfast, take ten minutes and try to mindfully think about five things that you’re grateful for in your life or five people that you’re grateful for having in your life.

By doing this for 30 days, we’ll instill a habit of gratitude and you can’t help but start to see the benefits.

If you’re a parent of multiple children, I’ve been a stay at home dad with my two boys for the past seven years, I have an eleven year old and eight year old and they tend to argue, well, I figured out a way to diffuse an argument almost instantly and that’s by separating the two peacefully and giving them each a piece of paper and pencil and trying to get them to think about reasons they’re grateful that they have a brother and usually, they don’t get to the third reason before the emotions have changed and the entire argument has been diffused.

So there’s two tips as to how to start instilling an attitude of gratitude in your kids.

Well, again this is Patrick McMillan here at Red Rocks Park. I want to thank you for watching our very first video article and our next article will be about beliefs and how beliefs are instilled, when and why and how we can change them.

So thank you again and don’t forget to hug your kids.

Find out more about my character education program here.