Focus on the Family

Q: Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Do you have any suggestions for emphasizing that it's more than just food, football, shopping and days off from school?

Jim: One of the key secrets to a happy life is gratitude. I'm not talking about brief moments (or days) here and there where we casually acknowledge the good things in life. It's actively living every day filled with gratitude.

Being grateful isn't just an emotion we feel -- it's a deliberate choice of perspective. Given the challenges we all face in life, we might have to search for reasons to be grateful. Maybe we're having trouble at work; we can still be thankful we have a job. Or maybe our child is making poor decisions. Amidst the disappointment, we can be grateful they're safe and healthy at that moment.

Gratitude isn't just thankfulness when everything is going right. After all, life is seldom like that. Instead, gratitude is understanding that we live in a broken world, yet choosing to be thankful anyway.

Doing that requires intentionally looking for the goodness around us. The smallest blessings can be the hardest to notice. But they're also the things that give our lives richness and meaning.

The Thanksgiving holiday is a great occasion to begin that practice. Many families go around the table and share what everyone is grateful for. In my household, we carry that tradition on throughout the year because we believe it's important to do. With kids, I'd strongly recommend emphasizing relational blessings over material possessions.

Life will always confront us with challenges. Those hardships can sometimes drain our gratitude. But making it a daily habit to pause and reflect helps us remember how much we have to be thankful for.

For more encouragement to make each day count, visit FocusOnTheFamily.com.

Q: My children struggle with handling their emotions. How do I help them learn to manage their feelings and develop healthy coping skills when difficult situations occur?

Dr. Danny Huerta, Vice President, Parenting & Youth: Emotions can be like untrained puppies. They need careful attention and training to become pleasant companions along the way.

At a young age, the part of the brain in charge of emotions -- the amygdala -- is fully formed. But the area that helps make sense of and manage those emotions develops at a much slower pace. As a result, your children are trying to communicate something they have not yet learned how to regulate.

Here are a few quick practical tips for helping your children manage their untamed emotions:

Teach Your Child to Be a Noticer. Your child can learn to notice how different emotions feel. You can start with "good or bad?" You can also describe emotions as connecting or disconnecting. Have your child notice and identify the emotional momentum inside their mind.

Teach Them to Become a Thought Detective. Children need to learn to think about their thinking. You can ask, "Tell me what thought is dancing with that emotion." Many times, their emotions make sense with what they see. Help your children develop healthy thought detective skills by presenting different ways of interpreting situations.

Develop an Emotions Vocabulary. An emotions vocabulary helps a child with communicating about how they are responding to what is happening around them. For example, an emotions chart can be instrumental in helping children come up with words for what's happening inside their mind as they try to navigate their world.

Like puppies, emotions take lots of patience, consistency, time and attention to be under control. To learn more about how to help your children manage their emotions, and explore our emotions and feelings charts, visit www.FocusOnParenting.com.

Jim Daly is a husband and father, an author, and president of Focus on the Family and host of the Focus on the Family radio program. Catch up with him at www.jimdalyblog.com or at www.facebook.com/DalyFocus.

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Q: My husband and I are struggling with my mother's behavior. My parents' marriage recently ended in divorce because Mom had an affair; now she's moved in with the other man and plans to marry him very soon. Should we readily accept her new husband?

Jim: It's completely understandable to be conflicted between two opposing elements. You'll always love your mom. But that doesn't mean you are obligated to approve of her choices and actions, especially when they cause hurt and damage to the rest of the family.

The bottom line is your mother is responsible for creating this awkward situation by choosing to disregard her marriage vows. She needs to understand the real-life consequences of her choices. I'd say it's both unfair and insensitive of her to demand that the family embrace her new boyfriend with open arms. Your mom needs to accept responsibility for what she's done and realize that her actions have had a profoundly negative impact on the people who love her most.

So, I'd suggest that you draw a very definite line in the sand. Strong boundaries are healthy; normalizing brokenness is not. For example, tell your mom that you're willing to welcome her at family gatherings so long as she's willing to respect your standards and values, and to honor them when she's in your home. Remind her that she has deeply hurt everyone in the family by deciding to become involved with another man. Say something like, "I love you and care about you, but I don't approve of this relationship."

From there, you and your husband can decide together how to proceed going forward. As your mother's son-in-law, rather than her own flesh-and-blood child, he might be able to say some things for you.

If you'd like to discuss this situation further with our staff counselors, I invite you to call 855-771-HELP (4357).

Q: Approaching our first anniversary, I'm surprised that the main area of tension for my husband and me -- really the only area -- centers on little chores around the house. Is this normal?

Dr. Greg Smalley, Vice President, Marriage & Family Formation: You're not alone! When couples are asked about stress points in marriage, things like finances and kids usually come up first. But multiple studies rank household chores third on that list.

Honestly, it's easy to understand how something as simple as housework can fuel conflict in a marriage. Life gets busy for couples. Soon they're each focused on the tasks they care about while perhaps forgetting the burdens their spouse is carrying. Before long there's an unintended power struggle over who does more and who works harder.

I encourage you to try to change your mindset. Start by acknowledging you're on the same team -- so housework should benefit your relationship, not tear it down. In fact, instead of arguing over who does more, what could happen if you each tried to "out-serve" one another? You love each other; one tangible way to express that every day is to extend yourselves doing things that benefit all concerned (like washing the dishes or dumping the garbage).

There are also practical ways to manage tensions. If a particular chore is your spouse's responsibility, don't dictate how and when they do it just because that's when you think it ought to be done. Leave some room for individual preferences. For example, you might prefer the bed be made each morning, but is that really an issue important enough to come between you?

Just like every other area of your marriage, sorting out the housework is all about communication and connection. So, prioritize honoring one another and finding common ground. For more tips, see FocusOnTheFamily.com/Marriage.

Jim Daly is a husband and father, an author, and president of Focus on the Family and host of the Focus on the Family radio program. Catch up with him at www.jimdalyblog.com or at www.facebook.com/DalyFocus.

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Q: My childhood was difficult, largely due to my father being an alcoholic. Now that I'm out of college and on my own, I'm concerned about how that past could affect me as an adult. Do you have insights or advice?

Jim: I know what it's like to grow up under painful and dysfunctional family dynamics, so I applaud your courage in wanting to proactively confront your own challenges.

Many children of alcoholics have difficulty expressing their feelings. Simply to survive, they've learned to insulate themselves against the pain of their environment by stuffing emotions like sadness and anger. Also, they often have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility (i.e., "it's all on me"), which grows from the necessity of caring for a drunken parent and emotionally supporting other family members during the hard times. These character traits might have been useful in their original setting -- but can often become liabilities affecting relationships later in life.

Another issue can be relating to authority figures. But this can take contrasting forms -- one individual might develop a highly rebellious attitude, while another becomes a "people pleaser," unable to assert themselves even when they're clearly being taken advantage of. They may also be terrified of abandonment and cling to negative relationships even in abusive circumstances.

For these and other reasons, adult children of alcoholics may become substance-addicted themselves or end up marrying alcoholics. Even if they don't, they may have extreme Type A personalities and display workaholic tendencies.

Of course, this description doesn't fit every person who grows up in an alcoholic home. Each individual and situation is unique. The good news is that there is effective help available, and our staff counselors would be pleased to help point you in the right direction. Please call them at 855-771-HELP (4357). I wish you all the best.

Q: I've noticed that it's difficult for my kids to be truly grateful. How can I help them develop a spirit of gratitude in our home?

Dr. Danny Huerta, Vice President, Parenting & Youth: Culture tends to train us to be consumers, so you are rowing upstream as you teach your kids what it means to be thankful. But this is a foundational component to one of the most important traits for your kids -- humility.

Teaching kids how to be grateful involves tweaks to their attitudes and perceptions. But something special starts to happen when gratitude becomes a habit in your family. Here are some quick tips on ways to begin instilling gratitude within the culture of your home:

Model Gratitude -- How do you show gratitude in your day-to-day life? I love to tell my teens that "life is a gift you get to unwrap one day at a time." What if you modeled looking at life through a lens of gratitude?

Do Some Gratitude Activities Together -- Daily activities can provide your kids with opportunities to experience gratitude visually and tangibly.

Gratitude Photo Album -- Have your kids take pictures of things they are grateful for throughout the day, week, month or year. Then consider sharing during a mealtime or display the photos in a photo album.

Gratitude Poster Board -- Challenge your kids to think of one thing they are thankful for each day of the month. Commit to writing these things on a poster board in your home and make it a challenge to not duplicate any of the gratitude entries. At the end of the month, let your children plan a gratitude party for the whole family.

To learn more about gratitude, go to FocusOnParenting.com. There you can also explore the 7 Traits of Effective Parenting, which outline how to make gratitude a part of your healthy home culture.

Jim Daly is a husband and father, an author, and president of Focus on the Family and host of the Focus on the Family radio program. Catch up with him at www.jimdalyblog.com or at www.facebook.com/DalyFocus.

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT SECURED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.