Find a moment when you can talk about appreciation with the family and how it is a valuable tool. Discuss how cynical society can be at times, asking your teens to state what signs of cynicism they observe in their lives. Speak personally on how appreciation widens people's perspective of what is really important and valued.

1. Ask each family member to write a list of people, events and things they appreciate. Request that no less than five items be written down.


2. Discuss some of items on each person's list. Go deep into the heart and talk about how you can enhance your appreciation of the people, events, and things you listed. Help each other find creative ways to express appreciation.


3. Have each family member post their list in their bedroom to remind them of who or what they appreciate. Reviewing the list helps nurture creative ideas of how to express appreciation. It also gives people an energy boost whenever they feel down.

Appreciating Your Day

1. At the end of the day, have everyone write, draw or verbalize at least one thing they appreciated about the day. Next, ask everyone to write, draw, or verbalize one thing they want to appreciate about the upcoming day. Post everyone's papers in a central location.


2. Set a time to get together the next day to revisit the list.


3. Talk about how everyone did. Did you appreciate what you thought you would? Did you forget? Did you appreciate more things? What were they? Add the new things you appreciated to your paper.


4. Even when you are grumpy, making an effort to appreciate something can help offset feelings of upset or stress. Ask if this happened to anyone.


5. Repeat the process every day for one week. Save all the appreciation sheets.


6. Collect the week's appreciation sheets in a scrapbook. You could review it at the end of the week.


7. Talk about what the game meant to each person. If the game has been fun, you might want to do it for a month and get together at the same time each week to update and review the scrapbook.