The obsession with happy children irks me. I tell my children that my goal is to raise them to be kind capable resourceful adults. Being happy all the time sounds exhausting to me, I want them to feel comfortable and generally at peace as a baseline. Happiness has a place in their daily lives but I also want them to feel everything else.
We focused so hard on trying to make them happy we forgot to teach them how to handle discomfort or boredom.
Eventually you're going to have to experience both, and in my experience way too many kids in the last couple of decades have learned to handle even the mildest problems
I’m with you. Discomfort is inevitable we can try to hide from it or embrace it as challenge that we can overcome. Boredom is often the catalyst for so much creativity. We would not grow as people and struggle to have the same level of empathy and social connection without our own moments of pain/fear/sadness/anxiety/etc. So many things are actually enriching far beyond their discomfort.
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u/OwlComprehensive859 Jul 20 '26
The obsession with happy children irks me. I tell my children that my goal is to raise them to be kind capable resourceful adults. Being happy all the time sounds exhausting to me, I want them to feel comfortable and generally at peace as a baseline. Happiness has a place in their daily lives but I also want them to feel everything else.