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  • Eight-day-old Cora Rice was born on her grandmother's birthday in...

    Eight-day-old Cora Rice was born on her grandmother's birthday in August. Unfortunately, her grandmother died a few months before Cora's birth. “A coincidence I couldn't have planned if I tried,” says mother Angela Rice.

  • Eight-day-old Cora Rice was born on her grandmother's birthday in...

    Eight-day-old Cora Rice was born on her grandmother's birthday in August. Unfortunately, her grandmother died a few months before Cora's birth. “A coincidence I couldn't have planned if I tried,” says mother Angela Rice.

  • Cora Rice at eight days old. Parents are Rob and...

    Cora Rice at eight days old. Parents are Rob and Angela Rice of Aliso Viejo. August 18, 2016. (photo by Kaysha Weiner, contributing photographer)

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Amy Bentley
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Six years ago, when my son was 10, the first iPad came out. Of course, he just had to have one. The cheapest model was $499, so I told him to start saving up his money because I wasn’t buying him a new iPad like so many other parents did at the time. No amount of begging or bugging would change my mind.

So he saved gift money, his allowance and money he earned for doing extra chores. Two years later, he’d saved about $400. With my approval, my generous cousin gave him the last $100, and Logan finally bought his iPad. He still has it and has taken care of it like it’s a brick of gold. Kids seem to appreciate material things more when they have a stake in acquiring them.

Many American parents today, and especially those of means in Orange County, buy their kids most of what they want, from new iPhones to $100 sneakers to cars right when they turn 16. In our materialistic society, children from various income levels can grow up feeling entitled, and this can lead to selfish or ungrateful behavior as adults. The good news is that gratitude can be taught, and children will follow a good example.

“We have a social responsibility and a moral responsibility to teach our kids to care for other people. Being grateful for what you have is a first step,” said Catherine Pearlman, Ph.D., a licensed social worker and family therapist in Laguna Niguel known as “The Family Coach.”

Gratitude grows with use

Gratitude – a thankful appreciation and acknowledgment of the positive and good things in life – is a mental state that grows stronger with use and practice, according to research cited by Harvard Medical School’s Harvard Health Publications.

It’s easy to teach kids that it feels good to help someone and reap an internal reward, said Pearlman, who advocates that families do small things that aren’t so daunting to get that lesson across.

To teach gratefulness to her own kids, who are 9 and 13, Pearlman’s family performed a good deed a week for a year. These were mostly small things like picking up trash and donating baked goods to a local soup kitchen.

“It exposed them to a lot of things, just visiting a soup kitchen and seeing the people there,” she said. The family also bagged potatoes at a food bank for needy people who were grateful to have the potatoes that were scarred or imperfect. Her own kids saw that “poverty is literally down the street,” she said.

Practice small (and large) acts of kindess

As a busy working mother, Michelle Turley-Markovsky of Yorba Linda knows that teaching her kids gratitude can be hard because parents get caught up in everyday life. Turley-Markovsky, a former social worker, works full time as a children’s social services supervisor for the Riverside County Department of Social Services. She and her husband have a 5-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter, and they are working to raise grateful children.

“You really have to remind yourself on a global scale that we have so much,” she said. “Sometimes you have to take a step back. My husband’s favorite line is, ‘Sounds like a first-world problem.’ ”

“The biggest thing is showing your kids you are helping others. Follow it up with a conversation. It’s a good dinnertime conversation at any age. ‘Who did something nice for you today? Who did you do something nice for today?’ We really want to raise kids with a better outlook on life that you are thankful for what you have instead of missing what you don’t have.”

Turley-Markovsky and her husband also help their little ones write thank-you notes, have them do age-appropriate chores like feeding the dog, take them to visit Orange County’s foster care receiving home for older foster kids, and have them donate their toys to needy kids or Goodwill. Last year, her extended family shared Thanksgiving dinner at a relative’s home in Lake Forest and the group invited two Marines from Camp Pendleton to join them. The Marines were treated to dinner and some gift cards.

“Everybody came with a little gift for them for Thanksgiving and thanked them for their service. There are ways to include service into your life,” she said.

Research shows that teaching gratitude can make you happier too. According to Harvard Medical School’s Harvard Health Publications, psychological research shows that gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness, feeling positive emotions, enjoying good experiences, building strong relationships and being able to better deal with adversity. Studies show that in couples, those who took time to express gratitude for their partner felt more positive toward the other person.

It takes a village

Angela Rice of Aliso Viejo, a high school English teacher at Northwood High School in Irvine, believes the school community shares with parents the responsibility to teach gratitude. At work, Rice said, she sees many high school teens who appreciate their good fortune in the United States because they’ve learned from the internet how much worse off others are in many other countries. She noted that the Amnesty International club at Northwood High is huge.

“If we’re thankful and mindful of what’s happening around us, we’re going to be a better society, leaving the world a little better than the way you found it. We are so lucky by chance to be born in a county where you have so many opportunities. If you’re thankful and grateful for what you have, you’ll have a better perspective and be a little bit more happy,” said Rice, who with her husband has a blended family of six children ranging in age from 24 to their baby, Cora, who was born in August.

Cora’s birth brought home the gratitude lesson in a new way for Rice, who was six months pregnant with Cora when her own mother died of breast cancer.

“And now that my daughter is here and I’m dealing with the madness of caring for a newborn, I miss her terribly. But her outlook on life, and her ability to see the positive things in this world, is a behavior that I plan to continue and is something I will pass on to my own children. I am so thankful for the time I had with my mom, and so grateful to have had her as my mother in the first place. Not everyone gets to grow up with a loving, supportive parent,” she said.

Cora was born on her mother’s birthday. “A coincidence I couldn’t have planned if I tried,” said Rice, who works hard to instill thankfulness in all of her kids.

Last Christmas, for example, the Rice family volunteered with Grandma’s House of Hope, an organization in Santa Ana that fights poverty and homelessness. They set up a party at an apartment complex for residents affected by domestic abuse and wrapped gifts for them.

More ideas for teaching thankful ways

Dotty Hagmier of San Juan Capistrano, a registered nurse, yoga instructor and health coach, was inspired by this story to start her own gratitude project with her three kids, ages 7, 9 and 11. Her children are giving random thank-you notes at least once a week to someone like a teacher, the mail carrier, a crossing guard at school or their grandparents, and asking recipients to pass it on; and they are writing thank-you notes in the car for random people like a restaurant server. The kids are filling a gratitude jar in the kitchen with little notes about what they are grateful for and are making small tokens of appreciation for others at a special gratitude craft table.

So far the project has been a hit, and her daughter enjoyed making a gift for her teacher, Hagmier said.

“It’s all about being mindful of gratitude. How can we express that?” Hagmier said. “There’s so much to be grateful for, but the main idea is to actually act on it and tell people we’re grateful.”

Finally, Michelle King, a family therapist in Newport Beach and the parent of two children, ages 6 and 8, suggests parents encourage their kids to develop relationships with others who are less fortunate. King’s family travels several times a year to orphanages in Mexico. Her children develop ongoing relationships with the people at the orphanages and bring school supplies and Christmas gifts for the kids there.

“Help your kids see themselves in the world,” said King. “It changes their perspective of what it is to have and how it is to have.”