New Year's Resolution! Raising Happy Kids

We put a lot of focus into teaching our kids to clean their rooms, act responsibly and do their homework. These things are important, but there’s one thing that’s more important: teaching kids to enjoy life As parents, there is nothing we want more than to make sure our children are happy. Their contentment and wellbeing, after all, is – in some ways – within our power. But what makes a happy child? Is it giving into their every whim – and granting them more screen time – or is it about building secure at tachments, validating their experiences and encouraging autonomy? Being happy, proud and fulfilled aren’t just emotions that leave us feeling warm and fuzzy. Concrete positive outcomes are life-affirming, and they are associated with better school attendance, better academic performance, better self-esteem and better overall health. So how do we raise our children to be happy?

WHAT MAKES A CHILD HAPPY?

While happiness may seem rather basic – one is either happy or not – many things can contribute to a child’s happiness. External stimuli, for example, may make a child happy (or, conversely, it could make a child sad). Validation can result in peace and contentment, and friendships can be full of pleasure and joy. But there is no one thing which makes children happy. There is also no way to ensure a child is always happy. Full-time happiness is a myth, something that is impossible to attain. Still, there are skills you can teach your children to help them enjoy life to the full. Nurturing resilience is essential: empowering children to be resilient sets them up for positive, constructive experiences and helps them learn how to deal with difficult situations. It can also help them bounce back, when stressors occur. Encourage your children’s ability to successfully adapt, positively transform and return to their baseline despite being surrounded by stressors and adversity. Teaching kids to believe in themselves is never a bad decision, so instead of mollycoddling or overprotecting, focus on building autonomy and self-efficacy. Once children have control over their own decision-making and become confident in their decisions, they feel empowered to take an active part in creating their own happiness. Encouraging problem-solving – in school, with friends and with you – is a first step. By talking through difficult situations, you help your child learn how to handle the problems they’re facing currently and that they will face in the future. Empathy, being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, is a skill everyone should learn. Children benefit from appreciating each other’s similarities and differences, and the ability to empathise with the people around them helps them build fulfilling relationships. Likewise, it’s impor tant for children to understand the need for emotional regulation and impulse control. Incorporating mindfulness into their routine and encouraging them to be aware of their feelings helps with this.

POSITIVE PARENTING

Children need to feel supported (and loved) in order to become happy and healthy. They also need to be inspired by your own attitude to life and willingness to embrace happiness. Here are a few ways you can do that.

Foster connections: let your children see that you are actively involved in other people’s lives and, most importantly, their own. Spend quality time together having fun. Have meaningful conversations with them about school, friends and hobbies. Talk through and validate their experiences, and be open and honest about your own.

Model what happiness means to you: from practicing self-care to meditating, reading and moving your body, engaging in activities that bring you happiness will encourage your child to do the same. One of the best things you can do for your child’s emotional (and physical) wellbeing is to attend to your own.

Practice gratitude: help your children feel safe, secure and happy by expressing thankfulness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, prioritise their health, deal with adversity and build strong relationships. So how do you foster gratitude in children? One simple way is to ask them to take time daily – before or during a meal, for example – to name aloud something they are thankful for. Then, make it a regular ritual.

Discourage consumerism: children need to understand that while money can give them the oppor tunity to be happy, they can’t consume their way to happiness. How do you teach them this? Start by explaining that shopping is not a recreational activity, and follow through by limiting time spent in stores and malls. Many children get so much stuff nowadays that it quickly becomes overkill. By giving children too many gifts, you encourage them to believe that having things brings happiness – so try to avoid that, even on birthdays.

As for your own birthday, use it as an opportunity to reinforce your values. You might discourage gifts and instead ask your child to share a memory with you of a favourite family activity. You can also help your children dream up gifts for your spouse that will be meaningful, like a handmade card, a homebaked cake or a self-penned poem.

Play games with your children to demonstrate how much fun can be had with a simple deck of cards. Make a treehouse or bake a cake with them to show the pleasure of a productive activity. Go to a museum to show them the pleasure of an intellectual activity.

DON’T TRY TOO HARD

It sounds counterintuitive, but the best thing you can do for your children’s long-term happiness may be to stop trying to keep them happy. If we put our children in a bubble and grant them their every wish and desire, that is what they grow to expect… but the real world doesn’t work that way. To keep from overcoddling, recognise that you are not responsible for your child’s happiness. If we feel responsible for our children’s emotions, we have great difficulty allowing them to experience anger, sadness, or frustration. We swoop in immediately to give them whatever we think will bring a smile to their face, or solve whatever is causing them distress. Unfor tunately, children who don’t learn to deal with negative emotions are in danger of being crushed by them as adolescents and adults. Once you accept this, you’ll be less inclined to try to “fix” their feelings – and more likely to step back and allow them to develop the coping skills and resilience they’ll need to bounce back from life’s inevitable setbacks. Of course, if you really want to bolster your child’s self-esteem, focus less on compliments and more on providing them with ample oppor tunities to learn new skills. Mastery, not praise, is the real self-esteem builder. The great mistake good parents make is doing too much for their children. While it can be difficult to watch our children struggle, they’ll never know the thrill of mastery unless we allow them to risk failure. Few skills are per fected on a first try, becoming proficient in something takes practice. And through repeated experiences of mastery, children develop the can-do attitude that lets them approach future challenges with the zest and optimism that are central to a happy life.