What Makes a Child Happy: Understanding Your Child at Every Stage + Tips for Building a Healthy Parent-Child Relationship (2020)

As is obvious, raising a happy child requires some serious effort on your part as a parent, and there are certain aspects that should be taken care of to imbibe happiness as a trait in the persona of your child. Very few parents emphasize the emotional quotient of their child while they try to focus on the IQ levels. EQ is the child’s ability to recognize and express their emotions while having the ability to control them. You need to nurture this trait in your child by understanding his nature as few children are outspoken, while others can be a bit shy by nature.

Before we move on to the most important points which make your child happy, it’s essential to set the right expectations from your child. A little comparison with other children is fine but never show it in front of him as he may have his own abilities and natural gifts, and uneven comparing will not lift his spirits. Instead, he may become a victim of low self-esteem and an inferiority complex.

Understand the things which they like, and instead of assuming that everything is fine if they are not complaining, have regular conversations with them. Having said that, the whole exercise to make your child happy is not about making him happy for a short while; but to develop qualities, habits, and behavior that would make him a happy child today and a vibrant adult tomorrow. Let’s check a few of the important aspects which a parent should constantly imbibe and monitor to make their children happy and stress-free.

Making your child feel connected to his family members, neighbors, friends, and schoolmates and even to the pets at home is a proven way to promote your child’s emotional well being for a lifetime. Fostering connections is helpful for the child to understand the feelings of being loved, acknowledged, and wanted and acts as the strongest protector against distress, negative thoughts and can keep away risky behavior, including indulgence in smoking and drinking, etc.

Social connections help the child to mix well in society and understand the behavior and expectations of different people. Parents must ensure that the children are emotionally well connected to them in the best possible manner and shouldn’t be looking for solace somewhere else during tough times.

While putting efforts to keep a child happy is part of parenting, you must focus on keeping them happy in the long term and stop trying to bow down before every wish and desire of your children for their short term happiness. For example, eating chocolates and junk food can give short term happiness to your child, but refraining from these food habits and eating healthy food will provide long term health goals resulting in long term happiness for your children.

Don’t try to suppress the feelings of sadness, anger, or frustration, rather allow them to express their emotions freely and let them understand that this is a part of a normal person’s life. You shouldn’t try to give artificial happiness by hiding or lying about real situations and let them develop the resilience and coping skills to fight back during a gloomy situation or even worst, a setback.

Get a little bit selfish and start loving yourself first before you start loving your kids because only a happy parent can raise a happy kid. If you are in a negative mindset, that would certainly reflect in your behavior and will impact your kid too. So, first and foremost, part of happy parenting is to become satisfied with yourself as your kid wouldn’t be happy seeing his parents depressed, distressed, or angry. Hence, before you think about the emotional well being of your child, you must pay attention to your own mental, emotional, and physical well being to become a doting and proud parent.

Who doesn’t like praise, right? It’s the very nature of humans to feel good about them when someone appreciates anything about you or any work done by you. The same logic applies to children as well, you would be happy to see the smile on their face when you praise them for little things, it may be a small drawing or the child keeping their stuff at the right place.

Be vigilant not to praise the physical traits like beauty or skin color etc. as they don’t hold a long term happiness quotient. Instead of honoring the result and achievement, appreciate them for qualities like hard work, perseverance, persistence, and creativity, etc. as they may always not get the same results, but would remember that they have the traits imbibed in them and will get the strength to bounce back.

This is a mantra which you need to give your child once he starts understanding about the endless ‘win and lose’ game of life. Till about 4 years of age, whatever your child is learning and doing is for the first time in their life, be it walking, dress and feed themselves or learning alphabets. This is the time when you should allow them to do their own thing while observing so that they can utilize their full potential in the small tasks.

They may fall and learn to get up again while playing or doing a daily chore, but this way, they will understand the importance of ‘I can’ spirit and will develop important traits like courage and optimism. After 5 years of age, you can make your child aware of win and lose concept through small games and stories.

Make your child feel valued by providing him some real-life responsibilities like keeping the clothes in the wardrobe, putting the garbage in the bin, placing the utensils on the dining table before meals, or taking care of his baby sister while you complete other chores. This way, he will feel that he matters in the family and would start learning about taking accountability for small works in the house. Once your child starts learning about his contribution to the household works, he will develop traits like association and confidence, which are two important traits for long term happiness goals.

Children are like soft clay, and they can be molded the way you want. Taking advantage of this quality of children, you can imbibe small happiness habits in them so that with time, being happy becomes a part of their nature. Few impactful methods to build lasting happiness habits in kids are – getting distractions and temptations away, declaring in public about the happiness goals you have set for your child to get social support, taking one step at a time, i.e., inculcating one happiness habit at a time and allowing sometime before it gets perfected. Few happiness habits can be reading books daily, exercising, prayer, and one act of gratitude every day.

Once your kids attain perfection with some responsibilities, you should start sowing the seeds of self-discipline in them. Educate them about the importance of self-discipline, but first, you need to inculcate the same in your behavior. If you are throwing trash on the floor instead of the dustbin, then don’t expect kids to be self-disciplined enough to use the bin. As a parent, you need to lead by example when it comes to developing the habit of self-discipline in your child. Small acts like keeping the plates in the sink after meals, keeping the study table neat and arranged, etc. lay the foundation of self obedience in your kids and stay with him for the rest of his life.

Feeling relieved while your child is glued to the mobile, TV, or computer screen and thinking that they are playing or getting entertained is definitely not a healthy and long term happiness habit. You wouldn’t want this happiness habit to be embedded in your children, so before they get habitual of mobile games or get addicted to the internet; encourage and, if required, involve yourself in playing outside with your child. Video games, cartoons, or TV are okay for a few minutes, but they can’t replace the competitive spirit, physical endurance, and other benefits that are achieved by playing outdoor games.