Summary

What do we wish most for our children? Next to being healthy, we want them to be happy, of course! Fortunately, a wide array of scientific studies show that happiness is a learned behavior, a muscle we can help our children build and maintain. Drawing on what psychology, sociology, and neuroscience have proven about confidence, gratefulness, and optimism, and using her own chaotic and often hilarious real-world adventures as a mom to demonstrate do's and don'ts in action, Christine Carter, Ph.D, executive director of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, boils the process down to 10 simple happiness-inducing steps. With great wit, wisdom, and compassion, Carter covers the day-to-day pressure points of parenting-how best to discipline, get kids to school and activities on time, and get dinner on the table-as well as the more elusive issues of helping children build healthy friendships and develop emotional intelligence. In these 10 key steps, she helps you interact confidently and consistently with your kids to foster the skills, habits, and mindsets that will set the stage for positive emotions now and into their adolescence and beyond. Inside you will discover the best way avoid raising a brat---changing bad habits into good ones--- tips on how to change your kids' attitudes into gratitude; the trap of trying to be perfect-and how to stay clear of its pitfalls; the right way to praise kids-and why too much of the wrong kind can be just as bad as not enough; the spirit of kindness-how to raise kind, compassionate, and loving children; strategies for inspiring kids to do boring (but necessary) tasks-and become more self-motivated in the process. Complete with a series of tips, secrets, and strategies, Raising Happiness is a one-of-a-kind resource that will help you instill joy in your kids-and, in the process, become more joyful yourself.

Author Biography

Christine Carter, Ph.D., is the executive director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, an interdisciplinary research center that “translates” the study of happiness, compassion, and altruism for the public. A regular on ABC’s View from the Bay talk show, Carter has been profiled in a San Francisco Chronicle Magazine cover story and quoted in dozens of national online and print publications including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, American Baby, and Parenting. The mother of two young girls, she lives near San Francisco.

Introduction: The Art and Science of Raising Happy Kids	p. ix
Put on Your Own Oxygen Mask First	p. 3
Build a Village	p. 21
Expect Effort and Enjoyment, Not Perfection	p. 47
Choose Gratitude, Forgiveness, and Optimism	p. 65
Raise Their Emotional Intelligence	p. 83
Form Happiness Habits	p. 102
Teach Self-Discipline	p. 119
Enjoy the Present Moment	p. 131
Rig Their Environment for Happiness	p. 150
Eat Dinner Together	p. 173
Acknowledgments	p. 187
Notes	p. 189
Bibliography	p. 211
Index	p. 227
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

Excerpts

Chapter One

Step 1: Put on Your Own Oxygen Mask First

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically...on children than the unlived life of the parent.

—Carl Jung

CONFESSIONS OF A SELFISH MOTHER

To my friends and neighbors, my life seems pretty crazy. “You’re doing too much,” people tell me constantly. I write a blog, and I of course wrote this book. I run the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. I give several talks a month about raising happy kids, and I teach a parenting class, which I love doing. I’m active on committees at schools and our church. I try to pick up my kids from school several times a week. I’m fortunate that my work hours are flexible, which means I do a lot of my work at, um, 4:30 in the morning.

I think the key to staying sane (and healthy) as an involved working parent is actually to do more rather than less: more for yourself, that is. I try to go to the gym several days a week, even though the classes I like best are occasionally during prime family time. I try to spend a good deal of time with my friends, with and without the kids, eating out, sharing belly laughs and soulful confessions. I paint and I read for pleasure. I go on meditation retreats. I might be doing a lot, but I am often wildly happy by any measure.

The only time that I don’t do so well is when I let the balance shift too far toward taking care of my children’s every need before my own. I get strep throat whenever I am run-down. When I was trying to finish writing this book, I wasn’t getting enough sleep (if I wake up at 4:30 a.m. to get my work done, I have to go to sleep when the kids do), and I’d been to the gym only twice in a few weeks. I’d been working a lot, so I was always trying to maximize my time with the kids. To get back on track, I knew I needed to spend more time with my friends than I had been, and I needed to have some downtime— without the kids—doing something that nourished my soul. If I didn’t? In addition to the strep throat, I started to feel fried and snippy with the kids. So instead of making the most of my limited time with Molly and Fiona, our interactions were colored by how quickly I became irritated with them because I was so tired and stressed. What I needed to do was trade time with my children for “me time” to exercise or hang out with friends.

Doing this seems pretty selfish, especially for someone who is so wholeheartedly committed to my child-rearing project. Am I selfish? Should I be working less and spending more time with the kids, or working more in order to provide greater economic stability? Should I be making more and bigger personal sacrifices for my children? Would my kids benefit from more time with me? Would they be happier or better prepared for adulthood if I joined them riding bikes at the local elementary school instead of painting on Sunday afternoons? Is it narcissistic to even think that my children’s well-being improves with each additional minute they spend with me?

I know the answers to these questions: my own personal happiness, nourished by the time I take for myself, benefits my children. I’ve read the scientific studies that prove this.

So out with the guilt, and in with the joy. This chapter will tell you why it is so important that you put your own oxygen mask on first— why you should take care of your own happiness before you try to teach your kids the skills they’ll need to be happy. Along the way you’ll get a tour of the rest of the book and a lot of tips for how to be happy yourself.

This chapter is also about that other thing that is so important to take care of before you take care of your kids: your marriage, if you’ve got one, or your relationship with your children’s other parent, if you’ve got that. The quality of a marriage is