Helping Your Kids Understand Happiness

Helping Your Kids Understand Happiness


Whether or not you are generally happy, I believe you can master happiness by learning the following five steps and using them every day, so that happiness becomes part of the conversation. A real practice, a real topic, something that is practiced as a skill in how to best handle mental well-being.

Follow these steps and teach them to your children:

• The Happiness Decision (empowerment)
• Happiness Boosters (positive mood boost)
• Happiness Challenges (resiliency)
• Heart-Based M.A.P.S. (contentment/fulfillment)
• Faith (bliss and joy)

 The Happiness Decision -- Empower Yourself:

Reinforce their empowerment over their own mental state by encouraging them to choose happiness whenever they want to feel good. Remind them that in any moment, barring mental health issues such as depression that should be treated by a doctor, they can choose to be happy. And if they allow other people places and things power over their happiness, then they are just giving it away -- and their happiness is so valuable they want to keep it themselves and under their own control.

Happiness Boosters -- Create Positive Mood Whenever You Want:
Teach them how to boost their mood with a happiness practice filled with daily routines of a gratitude, kindness and positive reflection. Encourage dialogue around “I am grateful for ------------------- because it adds--------------------- to my life.” Encourage acts of kindness as part of a family contest or even part of allowance or bargaining agreements. At night, ask “What are three good things that happened today and how did you contribute to them?” Gratitude, kindness, and positive reflection aid in mood boosting.

Happiness Challenges -- Tools for Resiliency:

Use acceptance, forgiveness, and compassion to overcome adversity. Teach your children to respond with kindness, love, optimism, gratitude, and zest when placed in an adversarial position. Show them how to see the good that may come from the “bad” in life. Offer multiple perspectives on how acceptance, forgiveness, and compassion are the best ways to respond.

Heart-Based MAPS -- Follow your Heart:

Encourage them to see the deeper meaning and purpose in life or things they are doing in the day-to-day. Encourage them to be true to themselves by having acceptance and confidence with who they are deep inside. Encourage them to use their strengths. or what comes naturally to them in activities and situations that support their strengths.

Faith -- Trust in the Unknown:

When faced with the unknown, encourage faith and trust. We often feel fear or easily project a negative future when it comes to the unknown. Create a sense of empowerment through positive thinking and realistic optimism. Realistic optimism is where you have a realistic goal with an achievable plan and the belief in yourself to achieve it.

 So when teaching your kids about happiness, encourage them to be empowered over their own mental state, create a happiness practice of mood-boosting techniques, use happiness tools to respond to adversity, connect with the deeper meaning and purpose in life, be true to themselves, use their strengths, and choose faith*. Then your children will be better equipped to understand happiness as a tangible skill and concept to be learned and mastered.


Must Visit : handling emotions
Reference :  Dr. Aymee  
                     

Mental Health Days -- What to do when your child just won't go to school

Mental Health Days -- What to do when your child just won't go to school

For many parents, the middle of August is the most wonderful time of the year. After hearing a thousand iterations of “I’m bored!” and waging a positional (often losing) arms race against excessive screen time, we are thrilled to cram our children’s backpacks full of shiny new school supplies and post those “milestone” first-day-of-school pics to Instagram.

But for some parents—and children—the first day of school is a source of dread. All children can experience anxiety about starting a new school year.  In many cases, with acknowledgment and reassurance, parents can alleviate those fears and help their children to navigate the transition successfully. But mental health conditions can exacerbate those common anxieties and fears, sometimes even making your child physically ill.

Try these ideas to alleviate the back-to-school battles

If you’re one of those parents, I know your pain. Those early morning battles were a pretty regular occurrence in my household. Here are a few ideas that worked for me as I tried to support Eric’s mental health while also meeting his educational goals.

1.Plan ahead. Change can be hard for children, especially when they have mental health conditions. Working with your child and the school ahead of time can help to alleviate some of the fear and anxiety your child may face. With Eric, we would schedule a time to meet with his new teacher and tour his classroom ahead of time so that he could acclimate to the environment. Many school districts build these before-school open house times into their regular schedules, but you can also reach out to your child’s teacher individually because sometimes the crowds can be overwhelming for children who have sensory issues or anxiety. Teachers want our children to feel safe in the learning environment.

2.Believe your child and acknowledge his or her fears. Why doesn’t your child want to go to school? Children need to feel heard. They need to know that they are safe. Ask questions about your child’s symptoms and concerns. Is there some specific environmental trigger that you and the school can address? Is your child worried about being bullied? Can you and your child work on an accommodation with the school that will help with your child’s concerns?

 3.Address the attendance issues proactively in your child’s Individual Education Program (IEP) or Section 504 Plan. When Eric completed his sophomore year of high school, his illness was so well managed that he no longer met the criteria for a Serious Emotional Disturbance (SED) IEP. This was both a blessing and a source of anxiety for both of us. While I certainly celebrated Eric’s success in managing his behaviors and triggers, I was also nervous about a relapse. On his psychiatrist’s advice, we requested that unlimited mental health absences be written into his Section 504 Plan, which replaced the IEP.


4.Consider a non traditional school environment. In seventh grade, Eric struggled at a large junior high school and ultimately had to be transferred to an alternative program that provided safety but could not meet his educational needs. In ninth grade, he was able to transfer into a small public charter school, and that change made a significant difference in his academic performance. The charter school environment was much easier to navigate—the staff, teachers, and students felt like family.


Must visit : handling emotions
Read more : info.1in5minds.org