Warning to Parents: Don't Try to Make Your Children Happy

When it comes to their children, most parents think their job is to "make them happy," but they are wrong. Instead of trying to make their children happy, parents can best raise their children by validating and mirroring whatever emotions their children happen to be feeling. If your child is sad, don't try to immediately cheer him up. Rather, allow your child to feel the sadness, share it with you and you in turn can validate his experience of being sad. Unfortunately, parents usually think that if their child is sad, something is "wrong" and it is their duty to immediately "fix" the situation by making them happy. Additionally, parents tend to feel anxious or sad themselves when their child is sad or upset. Your child can pick up on this, and the consequence is that he begins to see his sad feelings as bad feelings. He then learns to hide or mask his "bad" feelings in order to make his parents content and happy. And because inevitably everyone will experience these "bad" feelings of anger and sadness at some point, he begins to believe that he is in some way bad or defective for having these feelings that make his parents upset. From this pattern children may also learn that to be in a relationship means to neglect their own needs at the expense of the other's needs, a pattern that is very difficult to unlearn and can affect their future relationships in adulthood. These concepts are beautifully illustrated in Alice Miller's classic book The Drama of the Gifted Child.

What a child needs most is to feel that all of her emotions are validated and accepted, and that she will be loved equally regardless of what she happens to be feeling. She can then embrace the full range of human emotions, knowing that they are all "good" feelings and that she is lovable having all of these feelings. This, in turn, will allow her to stay in touch with her emotions and lead to the development of a healthy self-concept and strong self-esteem. Your child will learn that not only are all of her emotions acceptable, but they serve a purpose. She will utilize her emotions to inform her and allow her to make sound decisions for herself in the future. If you have tolerance for your child's "bad" feelings, your child will learn to have tolerance for them, as well. The duty of parents isn't to make their children happy, it's to allow them to be human.