“I just want my kids to be happy"

The end of the school year is always a special time of year for teachers, students, and parents!  My wife is a middle school math and social studies teacher and recently heard an incredibly inspiring commencement address by the mother of one of her graduating 8th grade students.  She asked the audience, "When someone asks you, as a parent, what you want for your children as they grow up, how do you answer?"  She answered her own question by saying, "I answer that I just want my kids to be happy."  

Admittedly, both my wife and I would have answered the same way, and as it turns out, most of the 8th grade parents nodded their head and agreed that they would also respond with that answer.  The parent went on to explain, "The problem is that no matter how good you have it in life, there are going to be times when you just aren't happy.  And that's okay.  Instead, when asked that same question now, I answer I just want them to be kind."  What a powerful message.  

I am not certain, but my wife's 8th grade parent may have read an article written in The Boston Globe by two Harvard University education researchers, Richard Weissbourd and Alison Cashin ("Parents' obsession with raising happy kids is a big problem").  They write that "too much focus on our children's moment-to-moment well-being can actually make them less content.  If we want our children to grow into truly happy adults, we should teach them how to care about other people."  In other words, we should focus on teaching our children to be kind.

They write further, "In our work over the past decade, we have seen parents, especially those in more affluent communities, increasingly obsessed with their children's moment-to-moment happiness.  These parents often as 'mood police,' obsessively checking in with their children to see how they're feeling."  However, obsessing about our children's happiness is problematic for a number of reasons.  First, it can make them self-centered the point that they're happiness takes precedence over everything else in life.  Second, it can rob them of essential coping skills needed to deal with peer conflict, failures, or other types of adversity.  Third, it can harm their relationships with others.  As a corollary to the first point, selfishness not only makes you a lousy citizen, but it also makes you a bad friend and partner.  Given the fact that our well-being is often tied to the relationships that we have with others, creating self-centered kids by an obsessive focus on their happiness only backfires in the long run, making unhappy adults!

It's a very powerful and very appropriate message as finish up another school year and so many parents are sending their children off to high school, college, and beyond.  "So next time you're about to tell yourself, a friend, or your child, All that matters is being happy, take a moment to reflect.  Maybe you should say, All that matters is making the world a bit happier than you found it instead."