Teachers and Parents: We are grateful to you for working with us on our Developing Gratitude Project! Part of this project involves encouraging gratitude and in so doing, we’d like to provide you with our results as soon as we are able. As you remember, we’re collecting information on children and adolescents’ gratitude toward those who’ve helped them in some way. Although we have more children to talk with, we’d like to provide you with the information we have so far. We will update this as we talk to more children.

We asked children about their wishes and what they would do for someone who gave them that wish. So far, most children wished for material things, such as money or toys. However, older children were less likely to wish for these material things and more likely to wish for something that would be good for their future. When asked about gratitude, older children were more likely to try to give back to the person who did something nice for them with something that person would really like, rather than younger children. Older children were also more likely to say “thank you” than younger children. We’re continuing to talk with children and adolescents about their gratitude and, when we have more information, we will share it here.

For more information, you can read the entire report read the entire report (PDF), watch the Children’s Wishes and Their Thanks presentation, and read the Creating a Cycle of Gratitude booklet (PDF) or (Creando un Ciclo de Gratitud en Español PDF) or Criando um ciclo de gratidão em português PDF.

Feel free to leave comments or questions.