Raising Happiness

 Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps For More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents is my new favorite parenting book.  I checked it out of the library a few weeks ago and found myself marking so many passages to photocopy that I finally decided to just purchase my own copy of the book.  Christine Carter, the director of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, draws on the latest research and her own experience to come up with a succinct guide on how to raise not only happy children, but ones that are kind, grateful and self-motivated.  Not surprisingly, part of the recipe for happy children includes happy parents, so there are also plenty of tips on how to increase your own happiness and create a joyful family environment.

If you've read books like NurtureShock or Unconditional Parenting the science covered in Raising Happiness will not be new, and Carter does not spend a lot of time rehashing the research, she is more interested in the conclusions and how we can apply them to our parenting practice.  The thing that this book does amazingly well is offer specific advice while providing enough flexibility to tailor the recommendations to your family.  If saying a prayer before dinner as part of a gratitude practice doesn't work for you, how about a toast?  If you can't volunteer with your child, maybe you can pick up trash at the park together.  So many parenting books are either so rigid you feel that one misstep will doom your child for life or else so nebulous that you can't figure out how to apply any of their suggestions.

Initially I was a little put off by the book. The first chapter draws heavily on Carter's experiences as a working mom and I was starting to wonder if her tips would apply to parent who stays home.  Especially when, in a section on building a good relationship with your partner, she wrote "busy couples with kids and two full-time jobs don't have sex less than couples with a stay-at-home parent."  As if I have nothing to do other than lay around in lingerie thinking sexy thoughts.  Anyway, despite the shaky start, I was totally won over by the end of the second chapter. Raising Happiness is organized into short chapters, with sub-headings and "Try This" sections that make finding the information you're looking for easy.  She only employs one acronym (ERN - empathy, reason, non-controlling language) which is actually simple enough for me to remember and make use of when dealing with my 3 year old.  Plus, she recognizes that kids may respond differently to her tactics.  She actually includes an example where labeling a angry child's feeling does not diffuse the situation, but instead prompts him to shout "I AM NOT FRUSTRATED.  I AM HAPPY!"  So many of the examples in this book spoke to my own experience, from being bored while playing with my son to chaotic dinner time situations.

Since the book is about creating a happy and fulfilling family situation, its messages are relevant to families with infants all the way up through the teenage years.  Once you are beyond the books on when to introduce solids and how to get your baby to sleep (I read plenty of those!) I highly recommend picking up Raising Happiness.

Discipline

An acquaintance of mine started putting her daughter in time-outs at 9 months old. I never said anything, but I wondered (a) what could a 9 month old possibly do to earn a time out and (b) did this woman really think she was teaching her child anything useful by parking her in a pack n play for 2 minutes? I know many people swear by time-outs, but I've always felt vaguely uneasy with the concept. Taking a time-out from playing with peers is one thing, but isolating a young child from a parent especially when she is agitated and may not fully understand what she's done to upset that parent just seems cruel. So when a friend mentioned that Alfie Kohn's book, Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason, had some good alternatives to time-outs I decided to check it out of the library.

I really enjoyed the book. The first half catalogs how and why many popular discipline methods fail-- corporeal punishment, time-outs, reward charts and praise. Basically Kohn says that although such techniques may produce obedience in children, they do not help children to become kind, moral, confident or good problem solvers. Additionally such actions may end up eroding our relationships with our children. As he points out, "When you don't explain [why hitting is wrong] the default reason not to hit is that you'll be punished." And even if you do explain to your child why hitting is wrong in addition to punishing him, he is more likely to focus on the consequence to himself as opposed to how he may have hurt someone else. Praise and rewards for good behavior are essentially the other side of the same coin. Behaving well becomes all about self-interest instead of being a good citizen for the sake of others. The book is extensively footnoted and Kohn backs up most of his statements with research studies. Initially I thought his characterization of time-outs as "love withdrawal" was a bit extreme, but by the end of this section of the book he had convinced me that we should try to avoid these popular techniques, or at the very least not use them as our default form of discipline.

The second half of the book discusses what to do instead of time-outs, reward charts, etc. Kohn says we should listen to our children's explanations, give them reasons, give them choices, make compliance a game and, when necessary, exert parental authority with as much kindness and patience as possible. Here I would have really liked some more concrete examples. He did provide a few examples of how to deal with apologies, inappropriate TV shows and a really lovely anecdote about dealing with a child who was potentially going to clobber someone with a rock, but I still feel like more concrete examples would have been helpful. Of course the very nature of this type of discipline is that it is specific to the child and parent involved, so what may be effective and appropriate for one family may not work for another. For me, one of the most useful messages of the book is that we should remember our goals as parents center around teaching our children to be compassionate, thoughtful, confident people. I don't want my child to be the type of person who unquestioningly obeys the most powerful person around, whether that person is me as a parent, the queen bee in high school or an unethical boss at work.

But getting back to practical matters, I'm lucky that Baby M is a pretty good kid and I really don't have too many discipline problems. Other than some bedtime issues and food throwing we are in good shape. Luckily, I have a pretty high tolerance for mess and dog that eats everything. Seriously, how does anyone raise a toddler without a dog around to lick up the mess?