The Misguided Desire of Wanting Our Kids to be Happy

It’s both human, and typical of how we parent today: At the first indication of unhappiness from our kids, we rush in to fix it, serving, as Dr. Robin Berman explains, like human pacifiers. And while the intention is valid—why let a child suffer, when it’s so easy to take the pain away—the ramifications of protecting our kids from dealing with the ups-and-downs of life have far-reaching consequences per Dr. Berman, including a lack of agency, an inability to regulate emotions, and a future inclination for co-dependent relationships and to look to outside factors for soothing. Berman, who authored the must-read parenting tome, Permission to Parent: How to Raise Your Child with Love and Limits, explains below how to short-circuit the inclination to always step-in, and perhaps more importantly, learn how to model emotional regulation, even if you never experienced it when you, yourself, were a kid. (For more on goop from Dr. Berman, check out her series on narcissism: “The Legacy of a Narcissistic Parent,” “When It’s All About Them: Being Involved With a Narcissist,” and “How to Spot an Emotional Grown-Up.”)

Unhappiness: The Key to Raising Happy Kids

When I give parenting lectures around the country, I always ask the audience: “What do you want most for your children?” I have yet to hear the answer that I am looking for. The near-universal response I do get is: “I just want my kids to be happy.”

Sorry, but trying to make our kids happy all of the time has been a bust. It’s created a bunch of fragile and unhappy kids and young adults. Think of Veruca Salt in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and her famous refrain, “I want it now, Daddy!” as a cautionary tale. The faster her dad tap danced to please her, the more her tantrums escalated.

Here’s the secret: To have happy kids, you must teach them to tolerate being unhappy. I would tell Veruca’s dad he would have been better served to teach her to work through her big emotions—feelings like anger, frustration, and, yes, disappointment—rather than trying to protect her from them.

We’ve become a generation of Mr. Salts—placaters and pacifiers, parents who unintentionally become their child’s first co-dependent relationship. In one generation we’ve gone from barking, “Go to your room because I said so!” to “Oh, you don’t feel like going to bed? Let’s talk about it for two hours.” And then: “I will lie with you until you fall asleep, then tiptoe out of the room—that is, if I haven’t already fallen asleep in your bed and officially disrupted my own REM!”

“We’ve become a generation of Mr. Salts—placaters and pacifiers, parents who unintentionally become their child’s first co-dependent relationship.”

When you become a parent, you sign up to be an emotion coach, the personal trainer of your kid’s feelings. But why does this essential parenting task get such little airtime? Well-meaning parents devote eons of time to helping their children master new skills, ignoring the truth that, just like soccer and piano, teaching kids to manage their feelings is a skill that must be taught and practiced. How often do you hear: “I am sleep training my baby, my son is studying violin, I am coaching my daughter’s soccer team, we are going to Kumon to practice our math skills…” But where is the Kumon of feelings?

It’s never too early to show a child how to handle his feelings because babies have mirror neurons in their brains. They copy our behavior, essentially borrowing part of our nervous system to shape their own. When parents manage their feelings well in front their infants, they are helping their babies model positive emotional management.

One of the best gifts we can give our children is to show them how to install and turn on their emotional thermostats. This thermostat will serve them well throughout their lives. The science is in. Children and grown-ups who are at home with their emotions are more at home with themselves, and have an easier time navigating work, friendships, and love. Conversely, adults and teens who can’t regulate their feelings more often turn outside of themselves to self-soothe. They self-medicate with food, drugs, alcohol, they cling to bad relationships, become codependent, etc. When these individuals become too anxious, too sad, or too easily triggered, they end up in a therapist’s office or they take a seat on a permanent emotional roller coaster. And that ride isn’t fun.

“Children and grown-ups who are at home with their emotions are more at home with themselves, and have an easier time navigating work, friendships, and love.”

Unfortunately, we live in a society that is populated with what psychiatrists call dysregulated affect (labile emotions)—adults who can’t regulate their feelings. They pout, yell, call each other names, and dish out blame.

The media only amplifies this dysfunction. I worry about the lack of positive mentorship on display. Back in the day, if parents could not manage their feelings, kids could turn to Mike Brady or Mr. Rogers who modeled calm/measured emotions. Today, however, reality TV flaunts the dysregulated affect. A “Housewife” from wherever overturns a table or throws a glass. Presidential candidates name call, blast blame, and throw tantrums on air. This new norm of bad behavior makes it even more essential that parents teach their children to work through big emotions.

This is an enormous challenge for parents who haven’t had good role models themselves. If your parents lacked emotional thermostats—if they yelled, hit, shamed, and withheld parental love when they felt you “misbehaved”—how can you teach your children a different way?

“Back in the day, if parents could not manage their feelings, kids could turn to Mike Brady or Mr. Rogers who modeled calm/measured emotions. Today, however, reality TV flaunts the dysregulated affect.”

I see daily examples of parents repeating bad patterns. At a hotel pool last week, I heard a dad snap: “You are the only kid in this whole pool whining. I am not going to play with you anymore.” That same week I saw a mom threaten to leave her four-year-old in the grocery store if she did not behave. And a father who yelled at his squirmy three-year-old at a restaurant: “You are the reason we have to get take out.”

These primitive antics perpetuate the cycle, producing kids who might grow up ill equipped to manage their feelings.

So what can you do? Here is my short list for how to teach a child to manage big emotions: