How To Stop Your Kids From Becoming Drug Abusing Delinquents

Research on how to rear happy, healthy kids is becoming pretty impressive - here are the top tips from the research:

1. Protect them from emotional, physical and sexual abuse
2. Protect them from cruel environments (teasing, criticism, harsh punishment)
3. Sort out conflict between parents in kindhearted and effective ways
4. If either parent becomes depressed, do something about it
5. Don't use coercion and harsh punishment to try to control their behaviour instead be warm and flexible
6. Feed them Omega 3 supplements
7. Teach and encourage kind and empathic behaviour by prompting it (Sarah, how do you think Kate is feeling? Do you think she needs a hug?'); noticing and praising it ('David, you were so kind to play Barbie with Katie. She looked so happy.') and modelling it yourself. 
8. Send them to a school that encourages kind and empathic behaviour.
9. Give them attention. Play with them, chat with them, be interested and caring.
10. Notice when they do the right thing. It can be so easy to react when kids do the wrong thing and ignore it when they get things right, consciously try to focus on what they get right whilst also dealing with any poor behaviour.
11. When they are learning new and difficult behaviours, such as sharing their toys or handling conflict well, break it down into small steps and set up some form of reward system (like a sticker chart) but don't overuse external rewards.
12. Where possible give them choices (and coach them to understand the likely consequences of those choices).
13. Make sure they are supervised after school - including in their teenage years.
14. Encourage them to be mindful.
15. Help them to choose their values and then encourage them to make decisions in line with their values.

If you have young children then I highly recommend the Triple P program which is summarised in this book. Not only does it have strong evidence to support it but also I used it with my kids and they would both say it was a good approach! What more proof do you need!

Effective Parents Encourage Autonomy

If you want your teenager to

• Make good choices because they want to (rather than to please others)
• Handle their emotions effectively
• Pursue their interests with passion 
• Like and respect you, rather than resent you

Then you need to support your children in developing autonomy.

Practically what that means, is that you:

• Are interested in hearing their perspective even when it is different to your own (and don't act like their perspective is somehow less valid because they are a teenager)
• Give reasons for your opinions and advice
• Let them make their own decisions - but coach them to help them to consider all of the different options and think through the likely consequences of those different options
• Give them support when they need it - autonomy is different to independence.  They can get overwhelmed and feel a bit abandoned if you push them to become too independent too fast
• Live the values that you think are important.  For example, If you want them to value getting a good education then seeing you putting effort into learning new skills has more of an impact than all of the lectures you give them about how they must do well at school

Teenagers and Freedom

'Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.'  EM Forster

This is such good advice for parents of teenagers - and so incredibly scary!  How much freedom do we give our children in order to both keep them safe and give them the space to grow up properly?  I think it is about doing it in steps - giving them a small amount of freedom and seeing how they handle it.  I also tend to adopt the attitude that if my teenage children can give me a thoughtful plan for how they will keep themselves safe in a particular situation, then they are mature enough to handle that situation.

For example, my daughter, Ellie, loves to ride.  She wanted to do some jumping. I was anxious about this - pictures of her falling and terribly injured in my mind.  Ellie knows I am anxious about this, so, when she asked me if she could jump her horse, she spoke to me about what she had in place to keep herself safe.  The plans where detailed and sensible - so I said 'Yes'.

Does Money Make Us Happy?

Wealth and happiness across the world: material pr... [J Pers Soc Psychol. 2010] - PubMed result

In this huge survey with 136,839 participants (who were a representative sample of the population of the world), Diener et al found.

'Satisfaction with standard of living was a significantly stronger predictor of life evaluation than of feelings, whereas psychological need fulfilment significantly more strongly predicted positive feelings than evaluations of life.'

Which means that the more money you earn, the higher you are likely to rate your current life on a 0-10 scale (where 0 = worst possible life and 10 = best possible life). However, income is only moderately linked to positive feelings. Positive feelings (whether you smiled or laughed yesterday or felt feelings of enjoyment) are much more influenced by 'psychological need fulfilment'.  Psychological need fulfilment is about whether you have family or friends you could count on in an emergency, and also, whether, when you think about yesterday, you:

• Felt you were treated with respect 
• Learned something new
• Did what you do best, and, 
• Chose how your time was spent.