Count Your Blessings - Part 2

In my previous post, I touched on children taking for granted and do not know how to appreciate what they have.


During one of the sessions in Sunday School, I was assigned to present this topic to the children. I showed them a piece of white paper with a black dot:


“What do you see?” I asked the children. Many said: “I see a black dot.” There were no other answers. Then, one said: “I see some red marks.” and one said: “I see some fine lines.”

“What about this white area?” I asked while pointing to the white area. “Nobody seems to notice this because your focus is on the black dot.” Then I continued: “In life, the black dot symbolizes something bad that happens to you while the white area symbolizes something good. We always look at the bad side of things and complain a lot and make ourselves unhappy. However, we forget that there are many nice things around us that we should be happy for. For example, you would blame your parents for not allowing you to do certain things or buy certain things. “Why mummy always says NO?” but what we often forget is Mummy says lots of YES but we choose to remember the NO instead of the YES. So, start remembering the nice and good things and make yourself happy.


I tried this on my children but I used simpler words with lots of examples, examples of when I said YES and when I said NO. They kind of catch what I say but not 100%. I am going to do it again to reinforce this concept.