Should Children Be Happy All the Time?

This week's article summary is A Good Childhood is Better Than a Perfect One.

One of the biggest concerns for parents is their child’s happiness. We all want our kids to be happy. But we also want to prepare them to handle life’s inevitable ups and downs.

The article below is a reminder for parents that always protecting your children from sadness and trying to ensure their continual happiness don’t help develop their resilience as adults to cope with disappointment.

Ever since I taught a middle school World Religion course, I have been intrigued with the philosophy of buddhism, which provides a roadmap for a satisfied, fulfilled life. In a nutshell, Buddhism like ancient Stoicism advises to accept and not resist the good and bad of life. No matter what, our life will contain some happiness and some sadness. Buddhism recommends to never get too excited or too forlorn but to be accepting of all life has to offer. For all of us, including children, this means we need to understand that we can’t be happy all the time.

Similar to last week’s article summary on the importance of productive struggle, today’s advises us as parents and teachers to provide experiences for our children and students that are ‘challenging but manageable’. And productive struggle means dealing with a little discomfort. We want our kids to develop their confidence while also learning to deal with missteps and failures. My 4-year-old granddaughter likes to do jigsaw puzzles. She’s developmentally at the point where a 50 piece puzzle is the sweet spot challenge for her, yet the other day she asked me if we could try a 1000 piece puzzle. Almost as soon as I dropped all the pieces on the table, she seemed to know this was a challenge well beyond her ability and concentration levels. After about 15 minutes of frustration, she matter-of-factly said to me, “This is too hard, let’s do an easier one.” Clearly, the 1000 piece puzzle was challenging but not manageable. Still, I liked how calmly she handled this obstacle. She got perplexed, clearly wasn’t happy, then solved her problem, and moved on.

I’ve always tried to follow the Montessori mantra of ‘follow the child’. Kids will push themselves but often know when they need help. Becoming a well-adjusted adult requires countless lessons in childhood through both victories/accomplishments and losses/disappointments. 

Joe

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When Eric Wilson was a kid, he was taught to put a good face on things, no matter how anxious or down he felt. “Always smile,” he recalls his parents saying. Smiling through difficulty isn’t a useful coping skill for kids, but it does send a strong message: If you’re not happy, it’s because there’s something wrong with you, and you don’t want other people to find out.

In his book Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, he encourages children to identify, talk about, and overcome challenges rather than performing happiness. “It’s far easier said than done,” he says. “Parents often can’t stand to see their kids upset for one minute. They want to make it better.”

It’s natural to want to alleviate a child’s pain and to provide immediate assistance when struggles arise, but short-term and long-term happiness may be at odds. In an attempt to keep children happy now, many parents may be failing to help children develop the skills to pursue happiness for the rest of their lives. Parents’ desire to see their kids happy can stand in the way of their obligation to raise resilient adults capable of facing hardship and seeking out joy.

Put differently, the happiness of children may be overrated compared to the happiness of adults.

Unfortunately, this runs counter to a cultural environment in which children’s happiness is prized above all else. “The whole self-help industry says that the proper state of being is happiness,” says Wilson. “There’s this either/or logic.”

But that’s not how emotions really work. If you want to raise a child who’s happy in the long run, neuroscientists and psychologists argue that stepping back and letting the child face their problems prepares them to live happy lives down the road. 

Given that allowing space for discontent is part of ensuring long-term happiness, parents need to take a strategic approach to monitoring and ensuring their children’s happiness rather than exhibiting some of the knee-jerk responses that have become common.

So how do parents take that step back and focus on long-term happiness — healthy development — instead of trying to prevent all forms of sadness? A lot of it comes down to encouraging social behavior and shared experiences, explains NYU developmental psychologist Caitlin Canfield. 

When you’re stressed, your brain releases a hormone called cortisol into your body. Cortisol prepares your body to deal with a perceived threat or stressful situation by raising blood pressure and giving you a boost of energy.

But with too much stress, the ongoing cortisol dosage essentially keeps your body on high alert, potentially causing medical issues like anxiety or depression. This is why stress, more than unhappiness, might represent a clear and present danger for children.

“When we looked at kids in early elementary school who reported high chronic stress that was reflected in their cortisol levels,” says Canfield. “Those kids whose parents reported doing more reading, talking, teaching, and playing also reported that their kids had fewer mental health symptoms.”

“A lot of parents get stuck in the moment to moment — it’s really hard to tolerate the child’s distress,” says Conelea. “A lot of work comes from helping parents handle their own distress from seeing the child’s distress.”

It also comes down to helping kids learn important lessons early on.

When kids are having trouble regulating their emotions, you can take time to stop and talk to them about what’s bothering them. But sometimes, these high-quality problem-solving conversations are not possible because parents are busy, so something may be introduced as a distractor like an iPad because it’s the best thing to do to alleviate stressful situations in the moment.

It’s really good for kids to be in situations that are challenging but manageable. Challenging but manageable is the space where we improve and we grow and we learn. Those kinds of healthy amounts of challenge are important for developing long-term psychological health.

All that said, it’s also important that parents understand that they can only help so much. A massive literature review found that nearly every character trait is at least partially linked to genetics. That includes things like a child’s overall disposition or propensity for melancholy. And it’s all fine as long as parents are willing to engage with the idea that sadness is not, in and off itself, without virtue. It can provide an emotional forum for developing resilience.

“I think our culture needs to be more patient with sorrow, with sadness, with grief. I think there’s a real impatience to get better quickly,” he says. “There aren’t spaces in our culture for that.”