Do you want your child to be happy?
I have a little trouble-maker at home, that is, my son, a six year old. Clever, defiant and impossible to manage. I have reached an impasse and now I am on the quest for solutions.
I read some books, but they turned out to be useless. This is a new approach from Alfie Kohn “Unconditional parenting”. I guess I will be quoting this book once in a while because it seems to make sense so far.
So, here we go:
“…there is something conspicuously insufficient about saying that our primary goal is for our children to be happy. Personally, I wouldn’t’ want my kids to be perpetually miserable social activists, but neither would I want them to be so focused on their own well-being that they were indifferent about other people’s suffering. Neither would I want happiness to be purchased at the price of their being unreflective, shallow, or unable to become outraged about outrageous things. Edward Deci put it this way: “When people want only happiness, they can actually undermine their own development because the quest for happiness can lead them to suppress other aspects of their experience… The true meaning of being alive is not just to feel happy, but to experience the full range of human emotions”. In sum I don’t think it’s possible to give any answer other than “Yes, but…” to the question “Do you want your child to be happy?”
from “Unconditional parenting” by Alfie Kohn, page 239.
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Posted on January 24th, 2010 under English, Parenting • Tags: activist, emotions, happiness, miserable, misery, Parenting, well-being. •
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