ENTING R PA
This is how psychologists suggest parents can raise a happy child; and we’re also carrying a touching open letter to mums.
SECRETS TO RAISING A HAPPY CHILD Being a happy child does not mean being given sweets on demand, but rather giving a child the skills to contribute, achieve things for themselves, connect with people, rebound from setbacks and gain the confidence to pave the way to their own success.
Every parent wants the same thing for their kids - to grow up feeling safe, secure, loved, comforted, confident, appropriately independent at each stage of their development, able and emotionally equipped to handle the school environment, challenges, to follow their dreams, and to find the success that makes them happy. But just how do we navigate the path to achieving this happiness in our children?
The difference between trying to ‘give’ them the emotion of happiness and enabling them to achieve it in themselves What makes a child happy? To answer this, it might be useful to start off by saying that making a child happy does not mean saying ‘yes’ to their every whim and demand. Giving them every new toy they ask for, or indulging them in staying up if they don’t want to go to bed, or giving them sweets and pizza all the time because they say it makes them happy is not the real definition of achieving a truly happy child. You can’t ‘give’ the emotion of happiness to a child, they need to feel it inside for themselves. Truly happy children come from a home environment that creates the conditions for the child’s happiness to flourish.
28 | OCTOBER 2020 | MOTHER, BABY & CHILD
