How to Empower Your Children By Not Making Them Happy All the Time

You are not responsible for making your children happy all the time. Author Merrilee Brown Boyack says that making your children happy all the time is one of the worst things you can do for them. She asserts that protecting children from feelings of frustration, delayed gratification, sadness, and misery makes them ill-equipped to deal with the normal frustrations and trials that are part of adult living. While she advises regular doses of happiness for children she also advises doses of real life trials. 

We should be happy for our children when we see them work through frustrations and trials. They’re becoming stronger and more able to cope with life. In the grand scheme of adulthood that confidence will contribute more to their happiness than making them happy all the time in their childhood.

        

        Merrilee suggests that we empower our children by giving them the message, “I know this is really hard but I have every confidence that you can handle it. I've seen you handle tough things before. You can do this!” The difficult part for parents is standing back and not intervening as children handle their own trials. Over time, Marrilee asserts, “…children will learn to make themselves happy. They will learn to choose that state of mind on their own. And we will have been successful parents.”

Read more advice from Merrilee Browne Boyack in her entertaining and instructive book, The Parenting Breakthrough. Fun and practical, author Merrilee Boyack has readers laughing out loud as well as feeling grateful for her parenting advice. She's a mom who's spent the last 22 years in the real-life work of parenting. “I have four sons, 13, 15, 17 and 22. You know what that means,” she writes. “I'm an absolute expert in raising children 23 and older.” Merrilee offers the “Parenting Breakthrough” for training kids — from toddlers to teens — to be independent. It includes ideas for how to teach kids about money, investing, debt, and the importance of earning their own money; how to help children with emotional and spiritual development; and much more.

    

Article Author: Sheryl C.S. Johnson
Photo Credit.
002 Boyack Not Happy