Children have the right to be unhappy

 

Children have the right to be unhappy

I have heard it so many times. “I just want my kids to be happy.”

I have thought and said it myself: It would be easy to have happy children if you give them what they want, but they need to learn to deal with unhappiness and disappointment.

When we focus so intently on creating happy kids, we are implicitly teaching them that any time they are not happy, life is bad.

It is an attitude that offers them ice-cream sundaes to cheer them up when they are sad. It is more toys when they are bored — or hours of TV to keep them entertained. But that only teaches them that lack of happiness can be fixed with ‘stuff’ that comes from the outside.

It is important to believe that your job as a parent is not to just make your children happy, it is to keep them healthy, safe and motivated.

The hope that we can always keep our ­children happy leads to a lot of bad parenting, much of it ­focused on parents who want to be their children’s buddies.

Get your child out of their comfort zone. When kids experience negative outcomes, they can lose the motivation to try new things. But taking risks and having new experiences can help kids to uncover new strengths and passions.

I am sure it is quite easy to have fabulously happy children. Don’t make them go to school, let them watch TV when they feel like it, stuff them with cakes and treat them like royalty. Love them and adore them and make them feel good about themselves at all times. Believe me, they will be pretty cheerful, but are those the kind of children we want?

Children have to face challenges, and they have to fail at some of those challenges. They have to learn to deal with unhappiness and disappointment, hard work is not much fun, but it does produce results. Running for a mile rather than flopping on the sofa is unpleasant in the short term, but beneficial in the long term. It has been seen that we want our children to be happy as it makes us feel good.

If our children are unhappy, we feel guilty, as if we must and can always protect them. The hope that we can always keep our children happy leads to a lot of bad parenting.

Parents make a mistake when they pamper in the name of love. Pampering creates weakness because children develop the belief that others should do everything for them. Pampering is doing things for our children that they are perfectly capable of doing for themselves. Giving love, affection and compliments or validating their feelings is not pampering. 

One of the greatest gifts you can give your children is to allow them to develop the belief, "I am capable." Children feel capable when they learn that they can survive the ups and downs of life.

Distinguish between your child's needs and wishes. Needs include relief from pain, hunger, and fear. In these cases, respond to crying immediately. Other crying is harmless and usually relates to your child's wishes. Crying is a normal response to change or frustration. When crying is part of a tantrum, ignore it. There are times when you will have to withhold attention and comforting temporarily to help your child learn something that is important.

Beware of thinking that your child is doing it on purpose or is trying to upset you. Children don’t have tantrums deliberately – they are stuck in a bad habit or just don’t have the skills right now to cope with the situation.

These strategies are no guarantee of parent-child domestic harmony. In fact, we should expect to have heated discussions about the role technology plays in our homes and in our kids’ lives, just as many families have fiery debates over giving the car keys to their teens on a Saturday night. Discussions, and at times, respectful disagreements are a sign of a healthy family.

The most important thing is to involve the child in the conversation and help them set their own rules. When parents impose limits without their kids’ inputs, they are setting them up to be resentful and incentivizing them to cheat the system.

You cannot control your child’s emotions or behaviour directly. You can only keep your child safe and guide their behaviour so tantrums are less likely to happen in the future.

It takes time for change to happen. Your child has a lot of growing up to do before tantrums are gone forever. Developing and practising self-regulation skills is a life-long task.

By 

Dr. Mona Shah

Occupational Therapist , Clinical Psychologist