Everybody wants their children to have more than they did.
I grew up in a one-income household, we didn’t have much, but there was always food on the table.
For our summer holidays we’d pile into the car and head to my gran’s house in Devon—a place I adored.
Days in Devon were spent mackerel fishing, bobbing around in a rubber dinghy, and watching the famous Brunel rail line cut through Dawlish Warren. It was simple, and it was enough.
These holidays certainly weren’t spent in Costa Rica or Puerto Rico.
My first skiing trip was to Whistler, Canada, when I was 22. I was visiting my brother, who was working as a lift operator before starting university.
At the time I couldn’t afford lessons, so I just threw myself down the mountain, repeatedly hoping to get the hang of it.
As I was slumped on the piste after a long, gruelling day of failure, I saw a tiny figure that looked like it was marching up the mountain towards me. As the chap got closer, I realised he was heading for me, and he was carrying a pint of beer. “You’ve been entertaining us for hours. This is for you!”.
Twenty years later, if you saw me now, you might argue that not much has improved! But I love skiing, and I’m grateful I had the chance to try something new.
Lots of people can get up and down the mountain safely, but you can always pick out the adults who learnt to ski as children⸺they ski with their feet closer together, and their poles are used for something other than marking where they left their skis.
This is why I wanted my children to have that experience early on, so we decided to take a ski trip during half-term. As many parents know, this is eye-wateringly expensive, but that was the choice we made.
On arrival at the slopes, we discovered the ski school was fully booked. With my wife Jane wrapped up with work commitments during the first two days, there was no other option but for me to hit the nursery slopes with the kids.
I braced for tantrums⸺learning to ski is frustrating when you’re small, cold, and constantly falling over.
They got angry. I stayed calm.
I had packed a giant rucksack stuffed with every possible solution for any minor inconvenience they could, and did, complain about, and we made it to lunchtime, largely in one piece.
Jane met us and asked: “How did it go?”
It went okay, but I found myself annoyed, not by the falls or the frustration, but their lack of appreciation.
As we walked back, I found myself explaining how lucky they were.
And then I caught myself.
To them, this wasn’t "lucky." In their eyes, they weren’t being gifted an incredible experience—they were being dragged away from LEGO, ‘Timmy Failure’ books and warmth to stand in the cold and fall over repeatedly.
They’re not 42, looking back on their life. They’re six and eight, living entirely in the moment.
And here’s where research backs up what I was realising in real-time: gratitude in children doesn’t work the way it does in adults.
Studies show that young children experience gratitude as a fleeting joy rather than a deep appreciation. Their gratitude is reactive, not reflective—it’s about getting something they like, not understanding privilege or opportunity.
A 2019 study in The Journal of Positive Psychology found that children under ten often struggle to connect experiences to a sense of fortune or advantage.
Gratitude, it turns out, is not something you can point out—it develops over time, through experience and reflection.
By day two, I managed to book them each a private instructor. Andrea and Christian glided over in their Ferrari-red suits, worked their magic, and by day five, the boys could ski. Or rather, they thought they could ski.
Which led to our first family run—an unmitigated disaster.
Thirty seconds in, they started racing each other, completely ignoring me screaming “RIGHT! GO RIGHT!”. Instead, they veered off-piste, straight towards a river below. Within seconds, all four of us were off-piste, with no obvious way back.
Thankfully, we made it out alive.
Riding the lift back up, I was very cross, while Jane was cross at me for being cross. But somewhere in the middle of all that I realised, it’s not reasonable to expect gratitude from an eight-year-old and a six-year-old.
Rather than telling children how lucky they are, experts recommend developing gratitude through small, daily practices, using simple prompts like:
These questions help children connect experiences to appreciation, rather than being lectured about how fortunate they are.
I wanted my two to appreciate their first ski trip, but maybe that’s asking too much of them right now.
Maybe, for now, it’s enough to focus on something simpler, like getting them to say “thank you” unprompted when someone places another hot chocolate in front of them. I’ll take that as a win.
For now, I’ll be the grateful one and enjoy how lucky I am to be fit enough to ski and fortunate enough to afford a family holiday at half term.
And maybe, just maybe, one day they’ll thank us. Maybe.
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