The Happiness Project: 10 Tips for Parents Who Want to Help Their Children Handle Social Struggles.

The Happiness Project

THE HAPPINESS PROJECT is the memoir of the year I spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier – happily, it was a #1 New York Times bestseller. As one of the hundreds of experiments I've conducted, I started this blog. Here, I recount my daily adventures in pursuit of happiness. –

Gretchen Rubin

What Started Me Thinking

"The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up." Mark Twain
“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” Robert Louis Stevenson
"Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Luke 10:41-42
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Simone Weil
“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” Colette
“It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.” G. K. Chesterton
“A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.” Joseph Addison
“Best is good. Better is best.” Lisa Grunwald
“Order is Heaven’s first law.” Alexander Pope

Happiness Theories I Reject

Flaubert: "To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless."
Vauvenargues: “There are men who are happy without knowing it.”
Eric Hoffer: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”
Sartre: "Hell is other people."
Willa Cather: “One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them…”
Alexander Smith: “We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.”
John Stuart Mill: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: 10 tips for parents who want to help their children navigate social struggles.

A few days ago, in a post about teasing, I quoted from Michael Thompson's excellent book, Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children.

In the book, Thompson includes a list of ten rules for parents who want to help their children manage their social lives. He discusses each point at greater length, of course, but I thought the list itself was very helpful.

1. Don’t worry so much. Remember that you gave your child a social start in life. [Elsewhere, he reminds parents that we can't spare their children normal social pain; it's part of growing up.]

2. Recognize the crucial difference between friendship and popularity. Friendship is more important. [Popularity is more about status than being well-liked.]

3. Support your children’s friendships.

4. Make your child’s friends welcome in your home.

5. Be a good friendship role model and teacher.

6. Provide a wide range of friendship and group opportunities.

7. Make friends with the parents of your child’s friends (and enemies).

8. Empathize with your child’s social pain, but keep it in perspective.

9. Know where your child stands in the group. If your child is in trouble socially, step in to help. If you child is popular or accepted, help him or her be a positive moral leader. Don’t act like a middle schooler yourself. [Elsewhere, Thompson points out that parents often make things worse when they intervene, so don’t rush in.]

10. Take the long view.

What do you think of this list? Agree, disagree? Anything you'd add?

* One of my more challenging resolutions is to Enjoy the fun of failure, and I loved this post by the excellent Gwen Bell, Mistake mulch: a short guide to making mistakes.

* It’s Word-of-Mouth Day, when I gently encourage (or, you might think, pester) you to spread the word about the Happiness Project. You might:
-- Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
-- Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @gretchenrubin)
-- Sign up for my free monthly newsletter (about 45,000 people get it)
-- Buy the book
-- Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update
-- Watch the one-minute book video
Thanks! I really appreciate any help. Word of mouth is the BEST.