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All holidays are special in their own right, and Thanksgiving is no different.
Today, we happily follow the old-time tradition of sharing an autumn harvest feast with others, like the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians in 1621, by coming together with family and friends to enjoy a delicious meal–most of the time, with turkey, and common Thanksgiving foods such as pumpkin or pecan pie, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, and more!
But Thanksgiving is more than just sitting together at a dinner table, feasting and laughing over the year’s memories thus far–it’s a holiday about gratitude, and taking the time to appreciate the circumstances of one’s life that enables them to feast at all, the people they have come to love, and those who have made meaningful connections with them.
Best of all, there are many ways to celebrate Thanksgiving with your child!
Here are four ways to make the most out of the special holiday this year:
1. Teach your child about gratitude.
From a young age, practicing gratitude and developing the habit of reflecting upon one’s current circumstances will only contribute to improving their well-being. While there will always be room for children to learn and grow moving forward from life after growing up under a foster care agency, teach them to appreciate life itself for all its experiences both good and bad, simple and complex. The sense of awareness that develops after practicing gratitude enables us to be more present and grounded as a whole. We become better people by applying lessons learned from them into our everyday lives. Most of all, when we practice gratitude, we naturally come to treat the world, ourselves, and others with more kindness. Besides, how can we truly enjoy and appreciate what life has to offer when we don’t even realize what we have in the first place?
2. Start a new and fun family tradition.
Any national holiday is an excuse for your family to develop a new and fun family tradition that can be carried out every year afterward. Traditions can be anything from taking a family photo in matching sweaters, traveling to a unique destination–like a city with changing leaves, or even stopping the local pumpkin patch to pick out a pumpkin that can be used to bake some yummy pumpkin-flavored pastries! Whatever a tradition may be, anything fun will make for wonderful memories years to come. Hopefully, family traditions that started in your child’s younger years can carry well into their adulthood when they raise their own families. Following a tradition may not seem like much at the moment, but looking back after many years have passed will never fail to show that its memories were worth making.
3. Plan Thanksgiving dinners with your child–and cook it with them!
Let your child be a part of the Thanksgiving dinner planning! Just because traditional Thanksgiving dinners call for turkey and mashed potatoes, it does not mean that you must strictly adhere to it every year. Think outside the box when it comes to what might make for a delicious and fun Thanksgiving dinner! For example, you can introduce and cook food from your culture or child’s culture, think of desserts and dinners that can be made with ingredients that are in season in fall like pumpkin or squash.
Invite your child to join you during the prepping process too! They can get hands-on experience with cooking under your supervision and may even develop a knack for doing so. Enjoying a meal with loved ones is a wonderful experience, but to prepare it alongside them makes the first bite just as rewarding–because you know how much love was put into it!
4. Volunteer your time to a local or nonprofit organization.
Look into current causes that would benefit from your time, care, and consideration into their missions–especially those that are given the most attention during Thanksgiving such as serving the homeless soup kitchens, assisting organizations with food drives, and of course–fundraising to help local foster agencies or private fostering agencies so they can create more family prospective resources! Everyone should be able to enjoy a holiday to the fullest, and your help can be the reason why a lot more people can. After volunteering, you will feel fulfilled knowing that your actions and time only served to contribute to a better, positive, and bigger purpose. At the end of the day, communities can always help one another live a better quality of life because there is always more kindness and love to share with everyone involved.
