Parenting Tips for Raising Happy Kids

What sets I Just Want My Kids To Be Happy! apart from the crowded marketplace of parenting books?

We're not another book about how to discipline your kids, how to talk about sex or drugs, or how to approach a unique problem (e.g., bedwetting, truancy, depression, etc.) The marketplace is filled with books like that. What makes us different? We're focused on the core philosophy of parenting—keeping the kids happy— that is both the hallmark of our era and a major factor contributing to levels of youth distress greater than we've ever seen. No other book has so explicitly focused on and challenged the happiness creed—I just want my kids to be happy—the key belief underlying millions of parents' approach to child-rearing.

We're also user-friendly. We understand that in their busy lives, parents don't want to read a long, thick, difficult text. So we put together a slim book with a big message—easy to read and understand. A book that moms and dads will not just start to read, like so many books on the nightstand, but will happily finish.

What makes the happiness creed worthy of attention?

Research reveals that children and teens today are more worried, more anxious, and more depressed than youth of decades past, despite the fact that the happiness of their children is millions of parents' fondest wish. How to explain these alarming statistics? In this book, we argue that the happiness creed has backfired. It leads to millions of fragile rather than resilient young people, preoccupied with themselves rather than socially minded, and ill-prepared to face the challenges that life promises to deliver.

How do we know that LARGE NUMBERS OF YOUNG PEOPLE raised in the era of the happiness creed are LACKING RESILIENCE?

Colleges report that over the past ten to fifteen years, increasing numbers of freshmen have come for help to the college counseling centers. Counselors report that so many of these freshmen seem to have trouble adjusting to college life. We argue that it's tied to the fact that once these young men and women are away from home, nobody is looking out for their happiness like mom and dad did. Nobody is shielding them from challenges and hardships the way mom and dad may have done, and so the kids aren't taking the hard knocks very gracefully. We also know from reports in the corporate world that young people are proving to be less effective team-players—more needy, more demanding, less able to compromise and tolerate the inevitable frustrations of the workplace. This, we argue, is the result of the preparation they had at home, where their individual happiness was always the most important thing.

Hasn't happiness always been parents' fondest wish for their children?

No, parents have not always made their children's happiness their biggest concern. The widespread embrace of the happiness creed by parents is a phenomenon of the late twentieth century. Past generations of parents made other concerns the “most important thing”: finding a good spouse, earning money, raising good children, enjoying good health, finding career success, making a contribution to society, etc.

Why has the happiness creed become so popular in recent decades?

The consumer marketplace has convinced us that life ought to be about ease, convenience, and pleasures of all kinds. Why? It's the source of happiness, according to the ads and commercials and smiling faces looking down from billboards. Happiness—that's the goal, according to the ubiquitous marketplace. And so we've become convinced that happiness is what it's all about, and that happiness is easily attainable through the “right” consumer products and services and experiences.

In addition to the role of the marketplace, so many of the dimensions of life that our grandparents emphasized as most important no longer inspire our confidence: marriage, religion, family, career. So parents are less inclined to endorse any particular goal or direction, and opt instead to give voice to the more general notion of happiness. These are only some of the reasons the happiness creed has been widely embraced in recent decades. We discuss other reasons in the book.

Regarding the happiness creed, why shouldn't parents “say it”?

When children hear the words “I just want you to be happy,” they hear something different than most parents intend. For reasons we explain in the book, younger children tend to equate happiness with having fun, and teens tend to equate happiness with having their way. It's not the message most parents want to convey, but it's what kids conclude. This is one of five reasons we offer for why parents shouldn't say it.

why shouldn't parents “think it”?

Our thoughts—our beliefs about kids, what they need from us and what's important for their healthy development—influence how we act, the approach we take to parenting. Believing that our children's happiness is the most important thing leads us to act in ways that hurt our kids. We describe five ways that the happiness creed leads parents to do the wrong thing. For instance, the creed leads us to try to keep our kids happy too much of the time, and as a result we over-shield them from challenging and difficult situations that make them momentarily unhappy, but build in them the sturdy resilience they'll need for the life ahead.

But isn't happiness a good thing to want for my children?

Of course happiness is a good thing. Research has shown that happy people tend to be healthier, live longer, are more successful in friendships—all kinds of benefits have been found in happy lives. We're very enthusiastic about the idea of rearing children who will enjoy happy lives. What we're saying is that there's a right way, and a wrong way to promote happiness in our children, and the happiness creed isn't the right way. It's crippling the kids rather than helping them attain happiness.

it seems like you're telling parents not to make happiness their biggest goal for their kids.

The problem comes when parents forget that happiness can't be planned and prescribed and grasped. It has always been, and still is a side-effect, a by-product of living life a certain way. Research has identified the key ingredients that show up again and again in the lives of happy people: ways they think, ways they live, ways they approach life. We've examined the happiness research from the past twenty-five years and found eight ingredients that turn up regularly in the lives of happy people. That's what parents should have as their goal—those eight key ingredients. That's what parents should talk about, what parents should emphasize. If parents plant the seeds of those ingredients in their children's lives today, happiness will bloom in their kids' lives tomorrow. Our book offers a roadmap for doing that planting.

What are the eight ingredients?

One of the most powerful ingredients is living life with a sense of gratitude. That seems to be one of the most effective predictors of who is happy and who is not. Studies about the effect of gratitude on our level of daily happiness have found some amazing results. Fortunately, a sense of gratitude can be developed, and there are things parents can do—we offer suggestions in the book—that can implant the sense of gratitude in children while they're young. That's only one of the eight ingredients. The rest are described in the book.

Is that all it takes—those eight ingredients?

No, along with planting the seeds of the eight ingredients, we talk about tilling the soil of childhood with the right nutrients, so the seeds flourish and grow. There are five nutrients that parents can put into the soil. For example, one of the nutrients is play. Play is an absolutely essential part of a healthy childhood, an important way that children learn certain skills that lay a foundation for happiness in life. We define play as an activity that's unstructured, so that kids depend on their imaginations to shape and create the activity. We cite research that reveals that children today are playing less than ever, that fewer hours of a child's week are spent in true play compared to children one or two generations ago. In part it's due to the invasion of electronics and media into children's lives. Watching television and playing videogames don't require children to use their imaginations in the same way as free, unstructured play. Organized games and sports also fail to meet the definition of true play. Play is just one of the childhood nutrients that lays a foundation for a happy life. In the book, we discuss the four others and offer lots of suggestions for ways parents can till the soil of their children's lives with these important nutrients.