As a grandmother and self-help writer, I’m often asked by readers, “How do you raise happy kids?” This is a question near and dear to every loving parent’s heart. No matter what we teach them, if we haven’t taught them how to be happy, or can’t parent in a way that makes them feel happy, it’s rather all for naught, isn’t it? So it’s a very pertinent question.
I’ve been blessed with having two happy children and two happy grandchildren. I applied certain principles in raising my kids, and see my son and daughter-in-law apply the same in raising their adorable daughters, Klara and Stina. In this article, I’ll share two tips I’ve learned along the way.
The first is the importance of modeling happiness. You can’t give something you don’t have. How can you teach kids happiness if you don’t have it yourself? Some parents think loving their family means living only for them, driving them everywhere, cleaning up after them, and putting their kids’ needs and desires way ahead of their own. Parenting shouldn’t turn us into a short-order restaurant or a cleaning or taxi service. It does for some parents. That teaches kids a bad lesson.
A child who perceives his parent as a servant, someone whose life has meaning only through catering to his whims, learns to be selfish. He comes to believe others exist to do his bidding. I have a friend who was raised like that, and she tells me when she grew up, she kept having the strange feeling, “Where are all the servants?” Being catered to was such an ingrained part of her childhood that adjusting to adulthood was difficult for her, because “the servants” were missing.
Kids who are raised this way tend to feel the world owes them a living. So breaking out of the “doormat” mode, if you’re in one, is pretty central to giving your kid a chance at a smooth transition to happy adulthood.
When you take care of yourself, make time for yourself, and do things that make you happy, your child learns those behaviors from you. If she sees you going for your dreams and making decisions based on your inner truth, she learns that doing those things is good. On the other hand, if you model dropping everything to fulfill her latest dictate, she learns that parenting means self-denial and victimization. She may then become a self-effacing parent herself or go the other extreme and forego parenting entirely because it looks like such a sacrifice.
So to raise happy kids, be good to yourself. Treat yourself with respect and dignity the same as you treat your child. Don’t allow disrespect toward you any more than you’d allow someone to be rude to your kids. Make time for your creative desires and dreams. Plan in some scheduled personal time each week (or day), and make sure that you take it.
Let your kids see you’re doing this, and tell them the reason: “Mommy needs to have some fun, too,” or “Moms need time every day to relax.” This shows your child that you value yourself, and that personal time is important to everyone’s happiness.
The second tip I’ve learned for raising happy kids is the tremendous value of focused attention. The best form this can take is uninterrupted, one-on-one personal time with your child. Think back to your own childhood and some of your happiest memories. Chances are they include that hike you took with Dad, or the time you and Mom went to the restaurant for a dessert.
When we set aside an hour or two to be with our child, away from distractions and interruptions, we tell him he is important and loved. Giving focused attention is much more powerful than the diffused attention kids get while we cook dinner, drive them somewhere, or break up conversations to take calls on our cell phone.
Children thrive on loving, focused, personal attention the way plants thrive on sunshine. Structure in some focused attention every day, even if it’s only for five or ten minutes. Look at your child when he talks to you, so he knows you’re completely with him. In love, it’s the subtle things that count.
Giving focused attention teaches self-worth: your child knows she’s valuable because you value her, enough to carve out time for you and her, uninterrupted by the world, for those moments. That spells love, and when she knows you love her, by your actions not your words, that brings security and heart fulfillment, essential foundations of happiness.
In this busy world where parents work two jobs and where kids’ social calendars can rival those of debutants, it isn’t easy to make time to take care of yourself and uninterrupted time for you and your child. But for happiness, nothing could be more important. Think about your schedule, what is nonessential that you can cut out, or wasted moments that you can eliminate. Use that harvested time to be good to you and your kid. Your child’s happiness, and yours, depend on it.
Share these books and activities to bring you and your child together for an experience both will remember forever.
Winsome Coutts holds a teacher’s certificate in education and has written hundreds of articles on self-development. She has studied with Bob Proctor and John Demartini, popular teachers featured on “The Secret” DVD. She is the passion behind the www.4lifehappykids.com and is a parent and grandparent.
Winsome is author of “Go for Your Goals” for kids – a set of downloadable e-books that guide your child through the joyful steps of learning visualization, goal-setting and the Law of Attraction. Simple language enhanced with beautiful illustrations and worksheets make these books appealing and motivating. To learn more, visit www.4lifehappykids.com
Balance. It's a nice word but the reality is hard to pin down. It may not even put us on the right track in our 21st century quest for fulfillment and happiness. In this article we will talk about the integration of work and family life, beginning not with the workplace and the employer's role in sorting things out, but with the person and her priorities.
Generally than people talk about work-life balance they mean the challenge of managing their family commitment when they've got children, while juggling the demands of a career. That's the traditional focus, but the concept has evolved quite a bit. There are now many younger people in the workforce, in their late 20s and early 30s, who may not even have home or family but they want a sense of balance in their life.
Often we are thinking of some sort of perfection, where nothing is out of place, there's no stress, and this of course is unrealistic. It automatically means a trade-off between work and life. If I give more time to my family I won't be able to do my job properly, or if I spend more time on the job my family will suffer. Yet I want to be able to have it all, to do it all, right now.
Let's think about integration, which means bringing the various pieces of our lives into a cohesive whole. We each have many roles, goals, responsibilities and life plans. We have to get it together. The attractive idea of finding ways to bring life into a unity will give us the harmony and happiness we seek.
Experience shows what people who have very clear priorities and their own clear definition of success succeed best at balancing their lives. They know what's most important in their lives. These are people who can say, before it happens: If I have to make a choice, if work and family come head to head, I know what my biggest priority is. People who realize it may have slow their career for a period of time, perhaps while a child is younger, and have a less demanding job so they can have more time at home. And they can be at peace with that, because their definition of success is not necessarily the one that society tells them.
Usually we have to just go through life and let the new promotion or the new demands of the job dictate what you do, to feel you don't have a choice. This is not balanced life road. We need to stop and reflect, communicate more with your husband, your wife, your manager at work, and basically be more pro-active.
The today's truth is that we have too much to do. Technology has changed things and made people accessible 24 hours a day, encroaching on the peaceful time people used to have. Yet some things don't change. We still have 24 hours a day. We all have the same amount of time and how we use it comes down to a personal choice.
The disorganization traits usually come from avoiding the choice and try to do too much. Even a simple thing like, What are we going to have for dinner tonight? can become a huge job if we feel, Oh, I've a lot of work and will not be able to do grocery shopping. Obviously, if we have the knowledge and skills to make something simpler than we're going to gain more time. This is what AcePlanner is built on - using good systems to simplify daily tasks so you don't spend inordinate amounts of time on work.
For balanced life planning and other basic management skills have to be used at home as well as in the workplace. One of the reasons why many people prefer going out to work to working at home is what we're very organized in the workplace, we use time management there, and then we come home and just ride the waves, consuming ourselves with the latest problem that has cropped up.
However there's nothing wrong with wanting to go out to work. We do need multiple interests to enrich our lives and many times we have talents that we need to give to the workplace and to the world. But it is true that work on the job is often more attractive because it is more project-oriented and very linear, and at the end of that piece of work we get the praise and a sense of accomplishment, whereas at home every day it's the same thing.
Human beings have certain basic needs that have to be taken care of every day, and although we can feel a sense of accomplishment that we have organized something at home, it's soon going to be dirtied again, or another meal is going to have to be put on the table. And this means changing your sense of where you get your satisfaction - not just from accomplishing the task or from the process of doing it, but from the motive.
We are all expecting a reward or praise for completed work. Lack of reward will kill our desire to work what leads to reduced productivity. This is why we prefer working for others than doing something for ourselves. Promise yourself a reward for completing each task or finishing the total job. For example let yourself watch an interesting movie when you finish developing page or new promotion plan.
I am sure that I am not alone in the fact that I have a large army of demons in my head. These demons are always talking to me and trying to advise me about how to react to different situations. For many years I listened and took their advice, these years were not exactly happy ones and I have now come to realise that these demons are not my friends but are actually my enemy.
I had many issues in my life that had a negative affect on my levels of self-esteem. The demons used these issues to get to me and to play their mind games. For this article, I am going to describe my stuttering demons and how I eventually destroyed them. The advice can be used for whatever type of demon you may have.
At the age of four, I developed a stutter which would continue to affect my speech for the next eighteen years of my life. I was aware of what I could and could not say and was also aware of the social situations in which I was more likely to stutter.
If I was asked a question by for example a friend, I would think of the answer but before I would have a chance to say it, a voice would appear. This voice or what I call my demons would advise me not to say that word and to substitute it for a different word.
If I was invited out to say a party, my demons would advise me not to go, as there would be a lot of people there that I did not know. They would remind me that I found it difficult talking to people which I did not know.
At one stage in my life, I decided that I wanted a career change as I was not happy in the role that I was in. My demons reminded me, that to find alternative employment meant going through the whole interview process again. They continued that I had always struggled to talk fluently at interviews, due to the pressure factor.
I would be able to speak quite well when I was drunk and this is when I would have the confidence to talk to the ladies. On several occasions a woman has given me their phone number and I would tell them that I would call them to arrange a night out. The next day though, when sober, the demons would remind me that making a phone call is what I find the hardest form of speech task and to simply not bother.
As previously stated, I used to listen to these demons and suffice it to say I did not go on my first date until I was eighteen years of age.
Things had to and were about to change. After reading many self-help books, I realised what I had been doing wrong. I should not be listening to these demons, in fact what I need to do is the opposite of what they tell me. Steve don't go to that party, OK then I will. Steve don't phone that lady up, OK I will, etc.
I am not trying to say that this is easy to do. I am happy to say that I have eradicated my speech demons and am now fluent, however I do still have demons in other areas of my life. There are not nearly as many as there have been in the past and I am slowly hopefully killing them all.
I treat it like a war. There are many battles and I have to say that I do not win them all. I talk to my demons all the time and especially when they win one of these type battles. I tell them that they may have won this particular battle but that I will win the overall war.
You may possibly think that I am a bit of a freak after reading this article. I frankly do not care, I am happier now than I have ever been.
Good luck in your quest to improve your own life.
