Parents: You Cannot Make Your Kids Happy
Hey.
Psst. Hey. You. Hey, you, the one reading this. Yeah, you. I lured you into this column with the above title because if I would have called this “How to Make Your Kids Happy,” it would have attracted all of the wrong people (people who think that they can make their kids happy). This column is not for them. It’s for you!
As I think you know, because you’re still reading this, you can’t make your kids happy. That is bad news, but it is true. That’s not how life works. Though we would all like to have the power to make others happy, especially our kids, we just don’t have that power. People can’t make other people happy. People, under the right conditions, can make themselves happy. What I am going to show you is a quick synopsis on how best to set up the right conditions so that your kids have the best possible chance of making themselves happy.
Don’t Confuse Gratification with Happiness
When you give your kids gifts, you are not making them happy. You are merely gratifying them. Gratification is simply pleasure derived from the satisfaction of a desire: I desire a new bike, I am given a new bike, I get pleasure from the new bike. The problem with gratification is that it always goes away. Many parents make the deadly mistake of giving more and more to keep their kids gratified. So, the fix for this is to stop gratifying your kids so much. Give them WAY less stuff and…
Create a State of Optimal Deprivation for Your Kids
It’s the job of the parent to provide their kids with what they need: food, water, shelter, love. That’s it. With everything else, kids need to be purposely deprived of two things:
Everything they want
The solutions to their problems
This optimal deprivation can set up your kids to have their very best shot at making themselves happy.
The reason why is that the closest science has come to describing human behavior that will allow a person to be happy is summed up in one word:
Progress.
When human beings make progress towards a goal, they have a surge of dopamine in their brains. This gives them a feeling of pleasure, and that pleasure increases as they keep working towards a goal.
This is why, if you want your kids to have their best chance for happiness, you don’t solve their problems and you don’t give them everything that they want. Instead, we must require kids to make progress towards earning the things they want. Kids need to be able to have lemonade stands, shovel snow, rake leaves, pet sit, babysit, and eventually get real, adult jobs. In most states, kids can start working at some actual jobs by the time they are 14.
So, when problems pop up in life for your kid, don’t solve them. Here’s how I avoid solving problems for kids while maximizing their opportunities for growth and happiness:
Kid: I can’t solve this problem.
Kid Whisperer: Yikes. What are you going to do?
That’s it. I can give minimal guidance in solving any problem when it’s convenient for me, but I will never solve a problem for Kid except under the following two conditions: When failure to do so may cause a severe or permanent injury, or when something is 100% physically impossible for Kid. I seem to remember opening some jars of peanut butter for my daughter when she was a toddler.
Also, kids solving problems on their own is so important that all parents should create problems that their kids need to solve. Those problems are called chores. A chore is a problem that needs solving: doing dishes is the solving of the problem that there are dirty dishes. Walking the dog is the solving of the problem that there is digestive waste inside of the dog that needs to be put somewhere besides on the floor of the living room. In addition, the doing of homework is the solving of a problem.
When a kid has solved all of the problems for the day-- the dog is walked, the homework is completed, the dishes are done-- and maybe even when the afterschool job has been worked, your kid will have EARNED something amazing: the satisfaction of jobs well done, money made and problems solved. Then, and perhaps only then, will your kid have the optimal means of making himself happy.