Gratitude Practices and Life Satisfaction in Children

Abstract

Practicing gratitude has long been associated with higher life satisfaction, better health, and more overall well-being for adults, but it has not been fully studied or implemented in children. With the ever-changing and increasing demands of the modern world, children need tangible tools to help prepare them for adulthood and to overcome the challenges they are facing. Practicing daily gratitude is a valuable tool for children and they would benefit to learn it early in life. In this experimental, within-subjects, pretest–posttest design, 18 third-grade students engaged in a 6-week gratitude intervention, with 3 weeks of gratitude journaling and 3 weeks of gratitude conversations, and measuring life satisfaction through the Student Life Satisfaction Scale. Life satisfaction was measured prior to any intervention, after journaling, and after conversation. The 18 third graders were split into two groups to counterbalance and prevent order effects. A repeated measures ANOVA determined that mean life satisfaction scores showed a statistically significant difference between time points, F(2, 34) = 23.279, p < .001, and that there was no statistically significant difference between type of gratitude intervention as seen through a repeated measures t test. These findings indicate that practicing gratitude does increase life satisfaction in third graders, indicating this is a valuable practice for children. Future research is needed to further explore the benefit of gratitude practices in children, particularly focusing on more longitudinal studies and expanded populations to increase generalizability.