One of the best things you can do as a parent is raise your children to recognise that happiness is a choice and that they have complete control over their lives.
You can choose to be happy or you can choose to be glum – but not both. If your situation or state of living doesn’t allow this, then be proactive. Make a list of all of the things that need to change in order for you to achieve happiness.
Here are my top five tips for raising happy children.
1. Choice
Teach your kids about choice. If happiness is just a choice in the moment, it allows them to recognise that they are in full control of whether or not they will have it. Ask them is this choice really working for you? What other choices could you make here?
2. Is this yours?
Our kids have a level of awareness that is often not acknowledged. They will be aware of other people’s stuff around them and think that it’s theirs. If your kids are unhappy ask them is this yours or someone else’s?
3. Creation
Show your kids that the choices they make will create their life. How many of us as parents have known something was not going to work yet chose it anyway? Get your kids to ask themselves, if I choose this what will it create?
4. Question
Kids are often shown from a young age to always look for the answer. What if asking questions also was valuable and gave our children different possibilities?
How does it get any better than this?
What else could be possible here?
5. NO judgement
Most of us have the idea that if we judge ourselves it will make us better parents. Does it ever work?
To be the best mum or the best dad often adds the pressure to always be in control. If something occurs outside our control that didn’t have a desired outcome, we take this personally as an indication of our poor parenting. What if we just said, ok that was an interesting choice, now what can we choose?
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