What makes child happy

But these principals, worthy as they are, are somewhat abstract. What a parent really wants is a concrete way to achieve these ends. While we can't offer a foolproof recipe for happiness, we have come up with a top-ten list of not-so-obvious ways to steer your child toward her place in the sun. Whether it's eating dinner together, observing birthdays and holidays, or reading bedtime stories every night, nothing is more valuable to your family than establishing rituals and traditions, says William Doherty, PhD, author of Take Back Your Kids: Confident Parenting in Turbulent Times Sorin Books.

Capital-T traditions -- lighting Sabbath candles or making Christmas cookies from a recipe passed down from your great-grandmother -- are important because they lend meaning to your child's life, reinforcing the bonds among family members and anchoring her to something beyond the purely temporal.

Equally precious, however, are the small, seemingly inconsequential customs and rituals that are unique to your immediate family -- the fact that you order Chinese food on Friday nights, say, or compose a funny poem for your child's first day of school each year. The familiarity and predictability of these routines make a child feel safe. Claims that listening to classical music will make your child smarter are greatly exaggerated, but there is no doubt about music's mood-altering qualities.

In ancient times, music and musical instruments were believed to have powers that healed both the body and the mind. In modern times, countless teachers have documented the therapeutic effects of song in one study at the University Hospitals of Cleveland, children who listened to "I've Been Working on the Railroad" while getting an inoculation felt less pain than those who didn't have music played for them.

And most of us know from everyday experience that a great song lifts our spirits and eases stress. After all, it's pretty hard to be in a bad mood during a rollicking rendition of "Old McDonald Had a Farm," especially if the whole family joins in. Active participation in your community sends at least two important messages to your child. When you coach a Little League team, for example, or pitch in at your preschool's fund-raiser, your child realizes that what matters to her matters to you.

And that gives her confidence a powerful boost. But on an even more fundamental level, your involvement underscores the value of community itself. It makes kids feel that they are part of a larger whole, and that individuals can affect others in a positive way.

Not surprisingly, research has also found a strong correlation between altruism and happiness, so why not get your child involved in helping others? Take her along when you volunteer at a local soup kitchen, or join in a neighborhood cleanup.

Even young kids can discover the satisfaction of giving back. We live in an age of ironic detachment, so you may not always be aware of the corrosive effect your flip comments have on your child. Yet a cynical attitude can take a huge toll on your child's sense of security, a crucial component of happiness. Kids need to believe that the world is a good place and that people are basically decent.

Never mind that you have concluded that your child's teacher is an idiot or that your elected officials are incompetent. When you voice these opinions, you undermine your child's faith in the people and the institutions around her. As a result, she may begin to view the world as a scary place. Happiness researchers agree that being truly absorbed in a challenging task is perhaps the surest route to happiness.

Being completely caught up in an activity can be achieved through all sorts of endeavors, from stamp collecting to painting to automobile repair. That's why it's important to expose your child to a wide range of experiences to see what appeals to him. This is not, we hasten to point out, an endorsement of the frantic overscheduling that has befallen so many children. The idea is to make your child aware of all that's available, allowing him to gravitate toward one or two pursuits that are meaningful to him.

Of course, if you really want to bolster your child's self-esteem, focus less on compliments and more on providing her with ample opportunities to learn new skills. Mastery, not praise, is the real self-esteem builder, Dr. Fortunately, when it comes to the under-4 crowd, nearly everything they do is a chance to attain mastery—because it's all new to them: learning to crawl, walk, feed and dress themselves, use the potty, and ride a tricycle.

Our challenge is to stand back and let our children do for themselves what they're capable of. While it can be difficult to watch our kids struggle, they'll never know the thrill of mastery unless we allow them to risk failure. Few skills are perfected on a first try. It's through practice that children achieve mastery. And through repeated experiences of mastery, they develop the can-do attitude that lets them approach future challenges with the zest and optimism that are central to a happy life.

And research shows that what human beings fear more than anything is exclusion. In other words, people have an innate need to be needed. So the more you can convey to your child that he is making a unique contribution to the family , from an early age, the greater his sense of self-worth and his ultimate happiness. Kids as young as 3 can play meaningful family roles, Murray says, whether it's refilling the cat's dry-food bowl or setting out the napkins at dinnertime.

If possible, assign a role that plays to your child's strengths. For example, if your little one loves to organize things, give him the job of sorting the forks and spoons. If he's particularly nurturing, perhaps his role could be entertaining his baby sister while you get dinner on the table. So long as you acknowledge that he's making a contribution to the family, it will heighten your child's sense of connection and confidence, two prerequisites for lasting happiness. Finally, happiness studies consistently link feelings of gratitude to emotional well-being.

Research at the University of California, Davis, and elsewhere has shown that people who keep daily or weekly gratitude journals feel more optimistic, make more progress toward goals, and feel better about their lives overall.

For a child, keeping a journal may be unrealistic. But one way to foster gratitude in children is to ask that each member of the family take time daily—before or during a meal, for example—to name aloud something he or she is thankful for, Carter suggests.

The important thing is to make it a regular ritual. I like the whole praise kids for their efforts. All kids need the good praise for the attempt. Kids wont know what they can do unless they try and failure is always a thing that is there just use positive reinforcement with them.

I really like the "growth-mindset" idea. I think it is really important to teach kids that practice makes perfect and skills are learned over time. By Marguerite Lamb April 22, But once we make such habits part of our lives, they become automatic and serve a protective function, making us more resilient. How can you support your child --and yourself -- to develop the habits that lead to happiness? These 12 tips will get you started.

Managing our moods, positive self-talk, cultivating optimism, celebrating life, practicing gratitude, and appreciating our connected-ness to each other and the entire universe area all habits that make us happier. Build these into your life together so you model them regularly and talk about using them. Over time, your child will follow your lead. Regular exercise, healthy eating, and meditation are all highly correlated with happiness levels.

But you and your child may have your own, more personal strategies; for many people music is an immediate mood lifter, for others a walk in nature always works. In fact, who better? Research shows that happy people give themselves ongoing reassurance, acknowledgment, praise and pep talks. Talk to yourself like someone you love, aloud so your kids can hear you. Click here for "How you can help your child become more Optimistic". Studies show that people who notice the small miracles of daily life, and allow themselves to be touched by them, are happier.

Daily life overflows with joyful occurrences: The show of the setting sun, no less astonishing for its daily repetition. The warmth of connection with the man at the newsstand who recognizes you and your child. The joy of finding a new book by a favorite author at the library. A letter from Grandma. The first crocuses of spring.

Children learn by our example what's important in life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. And the old saying that laughter is the best medicine turns out to be true. The more we laugh, the happier we are! It actually changes our body chemistry. So the next time you and your child want to shake off the doldrums, how about a Marx brothers movie? Research shows that people who are happiest have more people in their lives, and deeper relationships with those people.

Teach your child that while relationships take work, they're worth it. Many people think they can't be grateful until they're happy, meaning until they have something to be grateful for.

But look closely and you'll find that it's the opposite: people are happy because they are grateful. People who describe themselves as consciously cultivating gratefulness are rated as happier by those who know them, as well as by themselves. But there are many ways to help children learn to cultivate gratitude, which is the opposite of taking everything for granted.

Hint: Think modeling, not lecturing. Life is full of joy, but even for the happiest person life is also full of loss and pain, and we have daily reasons to grieve, large and small. Acknowledging our sad feelings isn't focusing on the negative, it's opening ourselves to the full range of being human. Accepting those uncomfortable sad feelings actually deepens our ability to take joy in our lives.

So choosing to be happy doesn't mean repressing our feelings. It means acknowledging and honoring all our feelings, and letting ourselves feel them. That allows us to move through the feelings, so they start to dissolve. With your child, simply empathizing with her upset feelings will allow her to feel them, and will help the feelings start to evaporate so she can move on. This is not a process that can be rushed, so give your child or yourself whatever time you need. But practice in doing this can really make us happier.

You can practice this by:. Of course, the hard part is choosing to change a bad mood. While you're in it, it's hard to take constructive action to change things.