http://www.ahaparenting.com/parenting-tools/raise-great-kids/emotionally-intelligent-child/happiness
Teaching Your Child the Art of Happiness
What makes a happy child who grows into a happy adult? For
many parents, raising happy children is the holy grail of parenting
success.
Since happiness is a by-product of emotional health, this whole website
is about helping you raise a happy child, from meeting your infant's
need to be held to helping your kids develop optimism. But let's talk
specifically about what makes humans happy.
What do you need to be happy? A winning lottery ticket?
The latest research on happiness gives us surprising news. Happiness turns out to be less a result of
luck and external circumstance than a product of our own mental,
emotional, and physical habits, which create the body chemistry that determines our happiness level.
We all know that some of us tend to be
more upbeat than others. Part of this is inborn, just the fate of our
genes that give us a happier mood. But much of our mood is habit.
It may seem odd to have happiness referred to as a habit. But it's likely that by the time we're adults, we have settled into the habit of being happy, or the habit of being unhappy.
Happiness is closely linked to three kinds of habits:
- How we think and feel about the world, and therefore perceive our experiences.
- Certain actions or habits, such as regular exercise, eating
healthfully, meditating, even -- proven in study after study --
regularly smiling and laughing!
- Character traits such as self-control, industry, fairness, citizenship, wisdom, courage, leadership, and honesty.
In practice, these character traits are just habits; tendencies to
act in certain ways when confronted with certain kinds of situations.
And certainly it makes sense that the more we exhibit these traits, the
better our lives work and the better we feel about ourselves, so the
happier we are.
Some of the habits that create happiness are
visible, the ways Grandma told us we ought to live: work hard, value
relationships with other people, keep our bodies healthy, manage our
money responsibly, contribute to our community.
Others are more personal habits of self management that
insulate us from unhappiness and create joy in our lives, such as
managing our moods and cultivating optimism. But once we make such habits part of our lives, they are automatic and serve a protective function.
How can you help your child begin to develop the habits that lead to happiness?
1.
Teach your child constructive habits to control his mind and create happiness:
managing our moods, positive self-talk, cultivating optimism,
celebrating life, practicing gratitude, and appreciating our
connected-ness to each other and the entire universe.
2.
Teach your child the self-management habits that create happiness:
regular exercise, healthy eating, and meditation are all highly
correlated with happiness levels. But you and your child may have your
own, more personal strategies; for many people music is an immediate
mood lifter, for others a walk in nature always works.
3.
Cultivate fun.
The old saying that laughter is the best medicine turns out to be true.
The more we laugh, the happier we are! So the next time you and your
child want to shake off the doldrums, how about a Marx brothers movie
marathon?
And here’s a wonderful tool: smiling makes us happier, even when we
force it. The feedback from our facial muscles informs us that we’re
happy, and immediately improves our mood. Not to mention the moods of
those around us, and that feedback loop uplifts everyone.
4.
Help him learn how to manage his moods.
Most people don’t know that they can choose to let bad moods go and
consciously change their moods. But practice in doing this can really
make us happier. Of course, we aren't talking about denial.
The
first step is always to acknowledge the bad feelings, and let ourselves
feel them. So with your child, simply empathizing with her upset
feelings will often allow them to dissipate.
But there are times when we just stay in a bad mood, rather than
nurturing ourselves through the upset, or choosing to change it. So if
you can practice monitoring your own moods and shifting them through
self-nurture and self-management, you can teach this skill to your
child.
Of course, the
hard part is choosing to change our bad mood. You don't have to go from
desolate to cheerful. Just find a way to help yourself feel slightly
better. That empowers you to actually face what's upsetting you, and try
to solve it. Sometimes just changing our the way we're thinking about a
situation really shifts things. So, instead of "How can he be nasty to me like that, with all I do for him?!" you might try "It's normal for children to get angry at their parents."
How to help your child with her moods? Sometime when she's in a good mood, talk with her about strategies for getting into a
better mood: what works for her? Share what works for you. Then,
when
she’s in a bad mood, start by empathizing. After she's had some time to
feel her upset, ask her if she wants help to change her mood. Even if
she’s able to choose a better mood only one
out of ten times initially, she’ll soon start to notice how much better
her life works when she does it.
5.
Model positive self- talk. We all need
a cheerleader to help us over life’s many hurdles. Who says we can’t be
our own? In fact, who better? Research shows that happy people give
themselves ongoing reassurance, acknowledgment, praise and pep talks.
6.
Cultivate optimism, it inoculates
against unhappiness. It’s true that some of us are born more optimistic
than others, but we can all cultivate it.
Click here for "How you can help your child become more Optimistic".
7.
Help your child find joy in everyday things. Studies show that people who notice the small miracles of daily life, and allow themselves to be touched by them, are happier.
Daily life overflows with joyful occurrences: The show of the
setting sun, no less astonishing for its daily repetition. The warmth
of connection with the man at the newsstand who recognizes you and your
child. The joy of finding a new book by a favorite author at the
library. A letter from Grandma. The first crocuses of spring.
As Albert Einstein said,
"There are only two ways to live your
life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though
everything is a miracle." Children learn by our example what's important in life.
8.
Help your child develop gratitude.
"We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of
getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and
appreciating what we do have." -- Frederick Keonig
Many people think they can't be grateful until they're happy. But
look closely and you'll find that it's the opposite: people are happy
because they are grateful. People who describe themselves as
consciously cultivating gratefulness are rated as happier by those who
know them, as well as by themselves.
Children don’t have a context for life, they don’t know whether they
are lucky or unlucky, only that their friend Brendon has more expensive
sneakers. But there are many ways to help children learn to cultivate
gratitude, which is the opposite of taking everything for granted. The
most obvious is modeling it.
9.
Counteract the message that happiness can be bought.
As parents, we need to remember that we are not the only ones teaching
our children about life. They get the constant media message that the
goal of life is more money and more things. Ultimately, what we model
and what we tell them will matter more, but we need to confront those
destructive messages directly.
10. Leave room for Grief. Life, as the Buddha said,
is full of suffering, and we have daily reasons to grieve.
Acknowledging our sad feelings actually gives us more range in feeling
our happy ones, and doesn't cause lingering unhappiness. Choosing to be happy doesn't mean
repressing our feelings. It means acknowledging and honoring our
feelings, and then letting them go.
11. Help your child learn the joy of contribution. Research shows that the pride of contributing to the betterment of society makes us
happier, and it will make our children happier too. Our job as parents
is to find ways for them to make a positive difference in the world so
they can enjoy and learn from this experience.
“Happiness is a by-product of character.
In people who are developing
a strong character, there is a dramatically higher
level of happiness than in those who live to chase
after the next good time.”
-- Pat Holt and Grace Ketterman, MD.
Whining is
common with toddlers and preschoolers. Parents are usually advised
to tell their kids to ask in a nice voice, because they can't hear the
whiny voice. But whining is a symptom of a deeper issue. So if you
want to eliminate whining, you have to address what's underneath. If
your child's whining is driving you crazy, here are six parent-proven
secrets to stop your child from whining. Which secret you use depends on why he's whining. 
