“You’re Grateful for What?”
by Ginny Bishop
I’m a family rituals guru. We have rituals at mealtimes, bedtime and at everything in between. I like to think it makes the ordinary, extraordinary. And with a family of eight, there’s loads of ordinary.
One of my biggies is the Family Grateful Journal. For more than a decade we have kept a journal as a family just about every day. It began at bedtime when the kids were small and now it occurs more regularly at dinnertime.
This works well because we have the best showing at dinnertime with a wide range of responses from “Camille won her game!” to “I love chocolate pudding!” to “Dylan got into college!” It’s a simple idea: we take an old composition book, decorate the outside and start our journal entries by listing the first initial of everyone’s name. We date the page and there’s one scribe who asks each person what they’re grateful for that day. It takes just a few minutes and it begins many interesting dinner conversations.
Sounds simple, eh? Well, it is but it’s also loaded with teachable moments. Not only do we all have to learn how to practice gratitude, but we also found that we created a family diary of sorts that documents our lives and the support a family has for one another. We can look back and read about wins and losses, favorite desserts, birthday parties, best friends, births of babies, trips around the globe, and sports rehab milestones. It’s all there on paper for us to remember—and rally around.
But the most poignant night around the family table was when my son, Kiefer, decided to use his grateful journal entry as a way to let dad know that he flunked another math test. Unable to find the right moment to give him the news, he thought it might be comical if he stated, “I’m grateful that I earned a 52% on my math test today.”
A hush fell over the room. Needless to say, the grateful journal exercise was not the way to break the news to dad. It earned Kiefer the loss of his cell phone, TV, video games and computer privileges for a month. It left the other kids saying, “How could he have been so stupid!” And needless to say, without TV, video games and the like to distract him, Kiefer earned a B- in math that semester.
So maybe it pays to be a family rituals guru.
by Ginny Bishop
I’m a family rituals guru. We have rituals at mealtimes, bedtime and at everything in between. I like to think it makes the ordinary, extraordinary. And with a family of eight, there’s loads of ordinary.
One of my biggies is the Family Grateful Journal. For more than a decade we have kept a journal as a family just about every day. It began at bedtime when the kids were small and now it occurs more regularly at dinnertime.
This works well because we have the best showing at dinnertime with a wide range of responses from “Camille won her game!” to “I love chocolate pudding!” to “Dylan got into college!” It’s a simple idea: we take an old composition book, decorate the outside and start our journal entries by listing the first initial of everyone’s name. We date the page and there’s one scribe who asks each person what they’re grateful for that day. It takes just a few minutes and it begins many interesting dinner conversations.
Sounds simple, eh? Well, it is but it’s also loaded with teachable moments. Not only do we all have to learn how to practice gratitude, but we also found that we created a family diary of sorts that documents our lives and the support a family has for one another. We can look back and read about wins and losses, favorite desserts, birthday parties, best friends, births of babies, trips around the globe, and sports rehab milestones. It’s all there on paper for us to remember—and rally around.
But the most poignant night around the family table was when my son, Kiefer, decided to use his grateful journal entry as a way to let dad know that he flunked another math test. Unable to find the right moment to give him the news, he thought it might be comical if he stated, “I’m grateful that I earned a 52% on my math test today.”
A hush fell over the room. Needless to say, the grateful journal exercise was not the way to break the news to dad. It earned Kiefer the loss of his cell phone, TV, video games and computer privileges for a month. It left the other kids saying, “How could he have been so stupid!” And needless to say, without TV, video games and the like to distract him, Kiefer earned a B- in math that semester.
So maybe it pays to be a family rituals guru.
