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070: Why isn’t my child grateful?
46 min •
6 augusti 2018
“I spent the whole morning painting and doing origami and felting projects with my daughter – and not only did she not say “thank you,” but she refused to help clean up!” (I actually said this myself this morning:-))
“We 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’t get to go on that one ride.” (I hope I never have to say this one…I’m not sure I could make it through Disneyland in one piece.)
You might recall that we did an episode a while back on manners, 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 – that your child will NOT learn to say “thank you” unless you tell your child “say thank you” every time someone gives them a gift.
We also talked about how parent educator Robin Einzig uses the concept of “modeling graciousness” and that if you treat other people graciously, when your child is ready, she will be gracious as well. 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.
But what really underlies manners? Well, ideas like gratitude. Because when we train children to say “thank you” before they are ready to do it themselves they might learn to recite the words at the appropriate time, but they aren’t really experiencing gratitude.
Dr. Jonathan Tudge of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro tells us much more about this, and how we can scaffold our child’s ability to experience gratitude, if we decide we might want to do that.
Dr. Tudge’s book, Developing Gratitude in Children and Adolescents (co-edited with Dr. Lia B. L. Freitas) contains lots more academic research on this topic if you’re interested.
References
Halberstadt, A.G., Langley, H.A., Hussong, A.M., Rothenberg, W.A., Coffman, J.L., Mokrova, I., & Costanzo, P.R. (2016). Parents’ understanding of gratitude in children: A thematic analysis. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 36, 439-451.
Kiang, l. Mendonca S., Liang, Y., Payir, A., O’Brien, 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.
Mendonca, 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.
Mercon-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.
Mokrova, 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.
Nelson, J.A., Freitas, L.B.L., O’Brien, M., Calkins, S.D., Leerkes, E.M., & Marcovich, S. (2013). Preschool-aged children’s understanding of gratitude: Relations with emotion and mental state knowledge. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 31, 42056.
Tudge, J.R.H., & Freitas, L.B.L. (Eds.) (2018). Developing gratitude in children and adolescents. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press.
Wang, D., Wang, Y.C., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2015). Expressions of gratitude in children and adolescents: Insights from China and the United States. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 46(8), 1039-1058.
Kiang, l. Mendonca S., Liang, Y., Payir, A., O’Brien, 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.
Mendonca, 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.
Mercon-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.
Mokrova, 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.
Nelson, J.A., Freitas, L.B.L., O’Brien, M., Calkins, S.D., Leerkes, E.M., & Marcovich, S. (2013). Preschool-aged children’s understanding of gratitude: Relations with emotion and mental state knowledge. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 31, 42056.
Tudge, J.R.H., & Freitas, L.B.L. (Eds.) (2018). Developing gratitude in children and adolescents. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press.
Wang, D., Wang, Y.C., & Tudge, J.R.H. (2015). Expressions of gratitude in children and adolescents: Insights from China and the United States. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 46(8), 1039-1058.
Read Full Transcript
Transcript Jen: [00:38] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. You might recall that we did an episode a while back on manners 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, that your child will not learn to say thank you unless you tell your child, say thank you every time someone gives them a gift. We also talked about how parent educator Robin Einzig uses the concept of “modeling graciousness” and that if you treat other people graciously when your child is ready, she will be gracious as well. The problem here, of course, is that most people expect your child to display some kind of manners before they’re developmentally ready to really understand the concept behind it. Recently I saw an article from the University of California Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center about the development of gratitude and I saw it quoted Professor Jonathan Tudge, who is actually edited a very recent book of research called developing gratitude in children and adolescents, and I knew we’d found the right person to speak with about this. Jen: [01:42] Professor Tudge, who goes by “Jon,” works in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, although you will hear from his accent in a minute that he’s perhaps not native to that part of the world. Most of his research focuses on the interrelations between the social world and children’s social, moral and cognitive development. He draws heavily on the ideas of Lev Vygotsky and Urie Bronfenbrenner, both of whom are practically old friends of our regular listeners by now, which means he’s interested in how social relationships shape development and in observing children “in the wild” as it were, rather than in lab situations. Welcome Jon. Dr. Tudge: [02:18] Welcome Jen. Thanks. Jen: [02:20] Thank you. So let’s start with the easy questions. What is gratitude? How do you define it? Dr. Tudge: [02:27] Yeah. It’s not terribly easy. Jen: [02:29] No, it’s not. Dr. Tudge: [02:30] No. Um, I think there are three aspects to a definition of gratitude. First of all, there has to be a benefactor, so when who’s now given something that’s really nice or who’s helped in some nice way and second beneficiary, the person that received that has to appreciate the good intention of the benefactor and feel good about that person and about what’s being done. And third, I think this is the most important part, has to be interested, really addressed. It has to want to desire to reciprocate in some way if there’s an appropriate opportunity. So there are three different parts to what I think is a good definition of the word. Jen:[03:11] And so that sort of leads me to think that we’re going to struggle with this in very young children. Dr. Tudge: [03:19] Uh, yes, we are. Obviously they’re not going to be grateful they’re not, they’re not. They’re not going to be grateful. Well, we have to be doing, I think is to try to think about ways in which we can best enable them over time to become the sort of grateful individuals we’d like them to be. Dr. Tudge: [03:38] Yeah, and even adults I think struggle with this and I have struggled with this over the years and only, probably in the last maybe five to 10 years or so, have become more cognizant of the fact that when I do someone a favor, when I do something for them, it matters more that the favor, you know, it might be a very small favor, but if it’s something that the other person wants, that’s much better than something that I might perceive as being a really big deal and doing that for that person. If it’s not something the person really valued in the first place. Dr. Tudge: [04:08] That’s right. Although I have to say, you know, if you try to do something that you think is going to be really nice for that person, I think that person ought to be grateful anyway because your intention was to do something nice for that person, right. So I think intentions do matter and that’s another reason why you can’t expect too much your children because it’s hard for children to understand exactly what someone else’s intention is. Jen: [04:34] Yeah, yeah, it is. Okay. So you have a very specific definition of gratitude and I think that from what I’ve read in your research and the research of others that can create problems when you try and measure gratitude because it seems as though all the tools that are used to measure it or looking at much more general concepts about how thankful is the child for being able to watch a sunset or for having things in their lives and that kind of thing. How does all that fit together? Dr. Tudge: [05:01] Yeah. It doesn’t fit very well at all that I think that most people who say they’re measuring gratitude are in fact measuring his appreciation, which is a different concept; its much broader. I have no problem with any of those scale as being a really good way of measuring how appreciative we are of all sorts of things. Whether it’s like you say, a beautiful sunset or the fact that is finally stopped thundering and lightning here, where I am, or the fact that you know, I live in a nice apartment here and I’m so much better off than anybody else, so I can appreciate all those sorts of things. I can appreciate the fact that I reached the grand old age of 69 and I’m very healthy. I mean so many things and that has almost nothing to do with gratitude. Jen: [05:46] And that’s specifically because nobody else is responsible for that. Right? There’s no benefactor that bestowed that on you. Dr. Tudge: [05:53] There’s no benefactor. Jen: [05:54] Unless you have a particular world belief. Dr. Tudge: [05:58] Well, yeah, you might. Even then that’s not enough. I think so. If I think the older this is your, for example, God, given which I might, but still if I don’t reciprocate in some way, just accept these things as my good fortune of my good luck or whatever, but don’t try and do anything to reciprocate I’m not being grateful. And I think that notion of trying to reciprocate if at all possible, you know, when it’s appropriate to do so is really important. So for example, if the sun was shining at the end of the day, beautiful sunset and I don’t appreciate it, people would never accuse me of being ungrateful, you know, it’d be stupid, wouldn’t it? They might say he’s unappreciative or you know, have a nice meal and I just wolf it down. You would never say I’m ungrateful for the meal or that I’m unappreciative of it. Dr. Tudge: [06:48] You might say I’m ungrateful to the person who has taken the time to cook it for me. But that’s because gratitude is towards another person. And if someone has done something nice for me, I don’t think it matters terribly much how warm and fuzzy I feel they know a good emotional response to that, that wonderful meal or that kind act. That’s great. It’s nice, it feels good for me. But if I had the chance to do something for that person, when that person needs it and I don’t do anything, it doesn’t matter how warm, fuzzy, and emotionally appreciative I was, I’m still an ungrateful jerk because I didn’t help when I had the challenge to do so. So I think it really got to distinguish between those two things, between appreciation and gratitude, and even talking about gratitude. You can’t ignore an grateful ingratitude. Jen: [07:47] So that makes me wonder then how critical is the other person’s need and reciprocating that gratitude if you never see the person have a need or is that just a completely unrealistic scenario? People are always going to have a need that you could potentially come in and fulfill. Dr. Tudge: [08:01] No, I don’t think so. I think there oftentimes people do things for you and you never have a chance to reciprocate and that does not make you an ungrateful person. You know, we can’t always do it. And even if you know, let’s say it’s pouring with rain, you can tell what’s been going on here the last couple of days. It’s pouring with rain. You’ve really helped me. And I’m driving along and my little sports car – I don’t actually have a sports car but let’s say I do – and your stuck there by the side of the road. Should I pick you up? Well, of course I should if I’m a grateful person, but it so happens that right next to you is a heavily pregnant young woman who’s just about to give birth and needs to get to the hospital. I ignore you and pick her up and take you. One would say I’m ungrateful in that sense. There are some situations in which we can’t actually reciprocate and there are some times when we can reciprocate, but we still don’t actually do so for valid reasons. When we call so an ungrateful, it’s because they typically, when they have a relevant opportunity to reciprocate to someone that’s already done something nice for them, they don’t do that. And I don’t care how emotionally warm they felt when they got the benefit. If they don’t try and help when they have a chance, they’re not grateful. It’s that simple. Jen: [09:28] So then I think you’ve partially answered the question that is on all the parents’ minds, which is is the act of saying thank you, gratitude. Dr. Tudge: [09:40] Well that’s a really interesting question, isn’t it? Because I [unintelligible] gratitude, but I think there are different types of gratitude and when you talk about a young child, you know, the mere fact of saying and meaning it, oh thank you Auntie Jen for giving me that, you know, is appropriate at the age. But if all we ever do is say thank you as adults and never tried to reciprocate, I think that’s not enough. So I think we got to think about not just gratitude is some generic thing, but rather has different types of gratitude that people can express. And you know, “thank you: is the simplest form. It is. It’s easily confused with just politeness. It doesn’t have anything to do necessarily with gratitude, but it could. I mean if you do something for me and I immediately say, “Oh Jen, thank you so much. I mean that was just absolutely wonderful what you’ve done for me. If ever I find a way to repay you, I’ll certainly try and do that.” That sounds to me like an expression of gratitude, right? So it’s not an grateful behavior, but I think we can do more on the more is that notion of reciprocation. So for young children that, that, you know saying thank you is not a bad thing at all. Jen:[11:05] All right, so. So then let’s dig into that a little bit because just the getting the child to say “thank you” can be problematic. And so as we talked about in our episode on manners, the research basically concludes you have to do this and so what I am interested in is understanding does this hurt or does it help? So different researchers looked at whether parents will say say thank you to your child. Or some parents will say, “What do you say?” Well there’s only really one response there and I’ve sort of gone down a bit of a different tack in which when somebody gives my daughter a gift, I give her a minute. And most of the time she doesn’t say thank you, and I say, I really give a heartfelt thank you to the person who gave her the gift from me to the benefactor in the hopes that that will...
Transcript Jen: [00:38] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. You might recall that we did an episode a while back on manners 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, that your child will not learn to say thank you unless you tell your child, say thank you every time someone gives them a gift. We also talked about how parent educator Robin Einzig uses the concept of “modeling graciousness” and that if you treat other people graciously when your child is ready, she will be gracious as well. The problem here, of course, is that most people expect your child to display some kind of manners before they’re developmentally ready to really understand the concept behind it. Recently I saw an article from the University of California Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center about the development of gratitude and I saw it quoted Professor Jonathan Tudge, who is actually edited a very recent book of research called developing gratitude in children and adolescents, and I knew we’d found the right person to speak with about this. Jen: [01:42] Professor Tudge, who goes by “Jon,” works in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, although you will hear from his accent in a minute that he’s perhaps not native to that part of the world. Most of his research focuses on the interrelations between the social world and children’s social, moral and cognitive development. He draws heavily on the ideas of Lev Vygotsky and Urie Bronfenbrenner, both of whom are practically old friends of our regular listeners by now, which means he’s interested in how social relationships shape development and in observing children “in the wild” as it were, rather than in lab situations. Welcome Jon. Dr. Tudge: [02:18] Welcome Jen. Thanks. Jen: [02:20] Thank you. So let’s start with the easy questions. What is gratitude? How do you define it? Dr. Tudge: [02:27] Yeah. It’s not terribly easy. Jen: [02:29] No, it’s not. Dr. Tudge: [02:30] No. Um, I think there are three aspects to a definition of gratitude. First of all, there has to be a benefactor, so when who’s now given something that’s really nice or who’s helped in some nice way and second beneficiary, the person that received that has to appreciate the good intention of the benefactor and feel good about that person and about what’s being done. And third, I think this is the most important part, has to be interested, really addressed. It has to want to desire to reciprocate in some way if there’s an appropriate opportunity. So there are three different parts to what I think is a good definition of the word. Jen:[03:11] And so that sort of leads me to think that we’re going to struggle with this in very young children. Dr. Tudge: [03:19] Uh, yes, we are. Obviously they’re not going to be grateful they’re not, they’re not. They’re not going to be grateful. Well, we have to be doing, I think is to try to think about ways in which we can best enable them over time to become the sort of grateful individuals we’d like them to be. Dr. Tudge: [03:38] Yeah, and even adults I think struggle with this and I have struggled with this over the years and only, probably in the last maybe five to 10 years or so, have become more cognizant of the fact that when I do someone a favor, when I do something for them, it matters more that the favor, you know, it might be a very small favor, but if it’s something that the other person wants, that’s much better than something that I might perceive as being a really big deal and doing that for that person. If it’s not something the person really valued in the first place. Dr. Tudge: [04:08] That’s right. Although I have to say, you know, if you try to do something that you think is going to be really nice for that person, I think that person ought to be grateful anyway because your intention was to do something nice for that person, right. So I think intentions do matter and that’s another reason why you can’t expect too much your children because it’s hard for children to understand exactly what someone else’s intention is. Jen: [04:34] Yeah, yeah, it is. Okay. So you have a very specific definition of gratitude and I think that from what I’ve read in your research and the research of others that can create problems when you try and measure gratitude because it seems as though all the tools that are used to measure it or looking at much more general concepts about how thankful is the child for being able to watch a sunset or for having things in their lives and that kind of thing. How does all that fit together? Dr. Tudge: [05:01] Yeah. It doesn’t fit very well at all that I think that most people who say they’re measuring gratitude are in fact measuring his appreciation, which is a different concept; its much broader. I have no problem with any of those scale as being a really good way of measuring how appreciative we are of all sorts of things. Whether it’s like you say, a beautiful sunset or the fact that is finally stopped thundering and lightning here, where I am, or the fact that you know, I live in a nice apartment here and I’m so much better off than anybody else, so I can appreciate all those sorts of things. I can appreciate the fact that I reached the grand old age of 69 and I’m very healthy. I mean so many things and that has almost nothing to do with gratitude. Jen: [05:46] And that’s specifically because nobody else is responsible for that. Right? There’s no benefactor that bestowed that on you. Dr. Tudge: [05:53] There’s no benefactor. Jen: [05:54] Unless you have a particular world belief. Dr. Tudge: [05:58] Well, yeah, you might. Even then that’s not enough. I think so. If I think the older this is your, for example, God, given which I might, but still if I don’t reciprocate in some way, just accept these things as my good fortune of my good luck or whatever, but don’t try and do anything to reciprocate I’m not being grateful. And I think that notion of trying to reciprocate if at all possible, you know, when it’s appropriate to do so is really important. So for example, if the sun was shining at the end of the day, beautiful sunset and I don’t appreciate it, people would never accuse me of being ungrateful, you know, it’d be stupid, wouldn’t it? They might say he’s unappreciative or you know, have a nice meal and I just wolf it down. You would never say I’m ungrateful for the meal or that I’m unappreciative of it. Dr. Tudge: [06:48] You might say I’m ungrateful to the person who has taken the time to cook it for me. But that’s because gratitude is towards another person. And if someone has done something nice for me, I don’t think it matters terribly much how warm and fuzzy I feel they know a good emotional response to that, that wonderful meal or that kind act. That’s great. It’s nice, it feels good for me. But if I had the chance to do something for that person, when that person needs it and I don’t do anything, it doesn’t matter how warm, fuzzy, and emotionally appreciative I was, I’m still an ungrateful jerk because I didn’t help when I had the challenge to do so. So I think it really got to distinguish between those two things, between appreciation and gratitude, and even talking about gratitude. You can’t ignore an grateful ingratitude. Jen: [07:47] So that makes me wonder then how critical is the other person’s need and reciprocating that gratitude if you never see the person have a need or is that just a completely unrealistic scenario? People are always going to have a need that you could potentially come in and fulfill. Dr. Tudge: [08:01] No, I don’t think so. I think there oftentimes people do things for you and you never have a chance to reciprocate and that does not make you an ungrateful person. You know, we can’t always do it. And even if you know, let’s say it’s pouring with rain, you can tell what’s been going on here the last couple of days. It’s pouring with rain. You’ve really helped me. And I’m driving along and my little sports car – I don’t actually have a sports car but let’s say I do – and your stuck there by the side of the road. Should I pick you up? Well, of course I should if I’m a grateful person, but it so happens that right next to you is a heavily pregnant young woman who’s just about to give birth and needs to get to the hospital. I ignore you and pick her up and take you. One would say I’m ungrateful in that sense. There are some situations in which we can’t actually reciprocate and there are some times when we can reciprocate, but we still don’t actually do so for valid reasons. When we call so an ungrateful, it’s because they typically, when they have a relevant opportunity to reciprocate to someone that’s already done something nice for them, they don’t do that. And I don’t care how emotionally warm they felt when they got the benefit. If they don’t try and help when they have a chance, they’re not grateful. It’s that simple. Jen: [09:28] So then I think you’ve partially answered the question that is on all the parents’ minds, which is is the act of saying thank you, gratitude. Dr. Tudge: [09:40] Well that’s a really interesting question, isn’t it? Because I [unintelligible] gratitude, but I think there are different types of gratitude and when you talk about a young child, you know, the mere fact of saying and meaning it, oh thank you Auntie Jen for giving me that, you know, is appropriate at the age. But if all we ever do is say thank you as adults and never tried to reciprocate, I think that’s not enough. So I think we got to think about not just gratitude is some generic thing, but rather has different types of gratitude that people can express. And you know, “thank you: is the simplest form. It is. It’s easily confused with just politeness. It doesn’t have anything to do necessarily with gratitude, but it could. I mean if you do something for me and I immediately say, “Oh Jen, thank you so much. I mean that was just absolutely wonderful what you’ve done for me. If ever I find a way to repay you, I’ll certainly try and do that.” That sounds to me like an expression of gratitude, right? So it’s not an grateful behavior, but I think we can do more on the more is that notion of reciprocation. So for young children that, that, you know saying thank you is not a bad thing at all. Jen:[11:05] All right, so. So then let’s dig into that a little bit because just the getting the child to say “thank you” can be problematic. And so as we talked about in our episode on manners, the research basically concludes you have to do this and so what I am interested in is understanding does this hurt or does it help? So different researchers looked at whether parents will say say thank you to your child. Or some parents will say, “What do you say?” Well there’s only really one response there and I’ve sort of gone down a bit of a different tack in which when somebody gives my daughter a gift, I give her a minute. And most of the time she doesn’t say thank you, and I say, I really give a heartfelt thank you to the person who gave her the gift from me to the benefactor in the hopes that that will...
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