How Parents Affect Kids' Happiness

March 11, 2010

Interview with Christine Carter, M.D., author of the book Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents

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Mike Carruthers:
Parents have a lot to do with whether or not their children are happy.

Christine Carter, M.D.:
Often parents think they have one cheerful kid and one grumpy kid and that’s kind of the way it is. But actually we have a lot of great science now that shows that there are factors that parents can teach their kids that will lead to happiness in childhood and beyond.

Christine Carter, author of the book Raising Happiness, says one of those factors is gratitude.

What we know now is that gratitude is a skill that we teach kids and that when we do that they’re much more likely to be happier, more engaged in life, they’re also more likely to sleep better, to exercise – so gratitude is one of those things that has far reaching benefits.

How do you practice gratitude?

In our household every night before the kids go to bed I ask them what their three good things were. And they tell me three good things that happened to them during the day and it’s a way of consciously practicing gratitude.

And as a parent your happiness is a big influence on how happy your child is.

Emotions are terribly contagious. We have neurons in our brains called mirror neurons and when we laugh or we feel happy and we’re in close proximity to our children their brains light up in the same areas that ours do for laughter – and they experience that happiness in their brains themselves.
 

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here