I frequently hear complaints from parents that their teens and tweeners are irrational.

Kids say they want to get into a good college, for example, but then they miss school because they’ve stayed up half the night watching movies. Or they say they’d like to keep taking guitar lessons so that they might be able to join their friends’ rock band, but they refuse to practice on a regular schedule or to show up to their lessons.

The first thing to accept is that it is your adolescent’s developmental job to take the irrational position, the position that they know you’ll disagree with. Teens are driven to individuate, or to gain autonomy and independence by differentiating themselves from us, their loving parents. This is why they sometimes take positions we just know they couldn’t possibly really believe. (Except that they do really believe in their take on things, at least emotionally.)

Once we understand that adolescents are highly likely to take seemingly irrational stances on things, there are strategies for us to influence our adolescent children without endangering their need to individuate. This post is based on a conversation that I had with Ron Dahl about raising teenagers, as well as some of Dahl’s written work.

I asked Dahl what he does with his children when he wants to influence them.

His answer? He uses techniques from a clinical method called “motivational interviewing.” Motivational interviewing has proven effective in motivating behavior change in teens in difficult arenas, like drug and alcohol abuse, disordered eating, and risky sexual behavior. Dahl’s advice was to learn to use it as a parent for the more mundane areas where we’d like to see growth in our children, so that if we need it for a bigger problem we know what we are doing.

Continue reading this post on Greater Good for five of Dahl’s techniques that decrease kids’ resistance to our influence.

A scientific expert on adolescence answers our burning questions.

If you could ask any question of a wise and experienced neuroscientist and pediatrician, one who specializes in the secret emotional life and bizarre brain activity of your adolescent child, what would you ask?

I recently had the great opportunity to ask some of my burning questions—and many that you have sent to me. Answers came from Ron Dahl, a highly acclaimed researcher and a member of the Greater Good Science Center’s faculty board. Here are three surprising things I learned from our interview. (More posts to follow!)

#1: Your adolescent isn’t a teenager.

Dahl avoids the term “teenager” because it implies that all the action is happening between the ages of 13 to 18. In truth, most girls are at the end of puberty by the age of 13.

The hormones that cause puberty—and the behavior we typically think of as teenager-y—start changing the brain before they start changing the body. In his research on puberty, Dahl’s lab focuses on adolescents ages nine to 13 because puberty typically lasts only two to four years.

“In hunter-gatherer societies,” Dahl explained to me, “the average age of menarche [the onset of menstruation] was 17 or 18 [years old],” because hunter-gathers typically didn’t get as many calories as we do now. When you go through puberty at 18, you’re an adult, and you’re ready to take on adult roles. But because puberty is starting so much earlier for our kids, we have a developmental dilemma: “If you’re eight, nine, or 10 years old and you’re starting to develop,” Dahl said, “when do you take on adult roles?”

Kids today are facing a very prolonged adolescence. What used to be a two-to-four-year period biologically is now a 15-year period culturally. The brain changes and the biological aspects of puberty start before the teenage years, but the cultural and societal aspects of adolescence don’t kick in until much later.

Today kids have a longer period of time to figure out who they are, to develop skills, to go to school. “There are huge advantages to this from a learning perspective,” Dahl told me, “but there are also liabilities” when the brain is developing out of sync with a kid’s role in society.

Continue this post on my Greater Good Science Center blog to see two more surprising truths–including one that made me reevaluate my own methods with my children.

Use Social Media to Raise Your Happiness Rather Than Distract From What Matters Most

Most people can’t avoid social media these days, even if they want to. But is social media bringing us together – or pulling us apart?

The Keep Good Going Report* recently found that half of Americans (51%) say that social networking has had a negative impact on how people interact with one another in society. Further, nearly half of frequent social media users (48%) felt that social networking makes no positive impact on how individuals interact with each other in society.

If you are similarly unsure about whether social media is a positive force in your life or in society, it can be helpful to know how to use media like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to foster happiness in your life and in the lives of others.

Here are three ways to use social media to cultivate happiness:

1) Use it to foster real-life social connections. If we’ve learned anything in the last 100 years of research on happiness, it is that a person’s happiness is best predicted by the breadth and depth of their connections to other people. Use Facebook to find a long lost friend—and then follow-up by getting in touch in person. Use Twitter to send a funny article to your spouse, so that you can both laugh about it at dinner later. Or use Instagram to send your teenager a photo of her favorite pet, so that she knows that you are thinking of her even when she is away at school.

2) Think about who you’d like to become in the future, and use social media as a tool to help you get there. If we want to be happy—or happier—there are ways to use Facebook and other social media to help us reach this goal. We know that certain practices, like acts of kindness and expressions of gratitude, are highly likely to increase our happiness. Social media is a tool that can be used to practice our happiness habits.

For example, why not post a photo of something that you feel grateful for on Instagram? Or build real-life social connections by posting appreciation for others on Facebook? Or use Pinterest to collect things that inspire and fill us with awe?

3) Think about how you want to influence the world for the better. When we start using social media to bring joy to ourselves and our communities, we can quickly see that it can be a powerful way to influence the world for good. We can re-post rubber-necking comments that are likely to spread fear (like those awful emergency room photos), or we can post quotations, articles, and photographs that inspire us and others. We can whine about how we were treated badly in the grocery store, or we can be activists, using social media to articulate our position on an issue.

When we use social media to help us influence the world in a positive way, it really can help us reach for our highest—and happiest—selves.

*The Keep Good Going Report is a survey of more than 2,000 Americans that was sponsored by New York Life.

Are you content to postpone happiness to promote achievement?

Are you pushing your children to succeed? Or giving them skills for happiness? In the latest video in a series on my Greater Good blog, I explain how happiness can lead to success. We all know successful people who are NOT happy. But did you know that happy people are more likely to be successful?

I’m always a little surprised by the posts that rise to the top!

Wondering which Raising Happiness posts were most popular in 2012—on Greater Good and Facebook—and which generated the most comments?  Here’s the list!

10. Not Too Thin, Not Too Fat 
How to raise healthy, happy kids.

9. Is Your Kid Mean? 
Five ways to raise kind and compassionate kids.

8. How to Deal with Misbehaving Kids 
The cure for “empty threat syndrome”

7. Turning the Morning Blitz into School-Day Bliss 
Five steps for peace before school

6. 3 New Year’s Resolutions that Will Make You Happier 
This year, skip the New Year’s diet and do something fun.

5. Is Your Spouse Enough for You? 
Four things you can to do to find out

4. Greater Happiness in 5 Minutes a Day 
How to teach kids loving-kindness meditation

3. Hate Your Husband? (or Your Wife?) 
You probably expect too much.

2. 3 Essential School Supplies That Aren’t on Your List 
More important than pencils and paper.

…and the most popular post of 2012 was…

1. Mirror Mirror on the Wall: Who’s the Best Mom of Them All? 
The top ten tips for being the best mom you can be.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Neuroscience can explain why your kids have the holiday gimmees.

I’ll never forget a holiday moment a few years ago, when I found myself in a negotiation with my younger daughter over her gift list. (Which, by the way, I don’t believe in. In theory, I’ve never wanted my kids to make lists of things they want for Christmas and Hanukkah. But we did “go see Santa” when they were younger, and they did prepare to ask him for a gift, so I’ve never really put my money where my mouth is.)

Anyway, my daughter was in the back of the car rattling off all the things she wanted for Christmas, excitedly, as though it were a done deal and she would soon be receiving everything she ever hoped for. And I was anxiously trying to do damage control:

Santa only brings one toy (“Nah-ah, Mom, he brought Ella THREE last year!!”); Santa can’t bring live animals (she passionately wanted a live llama); if your grandparents get you Uggs instead of Payless knock-offs, you won’t get any other presents from them (economic logic lost on a seven-year-old).

I thought I was going to lose my mind. I’d been trying to create special holiday traditions that foster positive emotions like gratitude and altruism—traditions that would bring meaning, connection, and positive memories. And it all seemed to be falling on deaf ears. My children had wish-lists longer than they were tall.  Even my parents were fighting me on going to church Christmas Eve, because they thought it would cut into the gift exchange.

I know I’m not alone; nearly all of my coaching clients have expressed similar dismay. So if we don’t want our children to be whipped into a consumer frenzy, and we value other things, why does this happen, year after year?

One answer, of course, is that on some level our society has come to believe that our economy depends on a gift giving extravaganza, and that the holidays wouldn’t be fun without all the gifts. I’ve been reflecting on this, and on the other forces at work this time of year.

Discover the three reasons why we want, want, want so much stuff come the holidays and what we, as parents—and consumers—can do to resist. Read the rest of this article here, on my Greater Good blog.

Because it isn’t always all fun & games

If you are starting to feel over-whelmed by the December holidays, you aren’t alone! In my last holiday-related Greater Good Science Center Raising Happiness video, I give three tips for making the holidays more meaningful than they are stressful.

With Thanksgiving and Hanukkah behind us, but Christmas, Kwanza, and New Year’s still ahead, many Americans are starting to feel, well, tired during this busy holiday season.

There is good news, though: the holidays really are the best time of the year to foster
the values that matter most.

In the Keep Good Going Report,* a recent survey I helped design, more than 2,000
Americans were asked about the most important things parents can teach their children.
Gratitude, kindness, compassion and manners were at the very top of the list of things
that people said were “extremely important”—far outpacing the value of giving kids
chores, encouraging them to play sports, and even reading to them.

Notably, a large majority of respondents (89%) indicated that society is becoming so
concerned with success that we are forgetting about what is truly important, and that
people are becoming more selfish (86%). Instead of getting caught up in what is going
wrong with our society this holiday season, I recommend that people use the holidays to
boost their happiness—and the happiness of those around them. Here’s how:

1. Start with gratitude. Taking a moment for gratitude is likely to give you a happiness boost and improve the emotional tone of your holiday season.

• Use the holidays as a time to give thanks for people in your life. In our family, we appreciate each other by writing on our dinner table place cards. Before a holiday meal, the kids make giant construction paper place cards for each guest, and as people arrive and mingle, we ask everyone to set aside time to write on the inside of each place card something that they love or appreciate about that person.

• Use this season to consciously weave gratitude into your daily interactions, using the common question “How are you?” as a trigger to practice gratitude.
  Here’s what I mean. Say you run into another parent at the school winter performance. “How’s it going?” she asks. Instead of giving into the temptation to tell her how busy you are, use this common question as a prompt to reflect on something for which you are grateful, then share that thought with the other person. Or keep it to yourself, if you’re feeling shy (or don’t want to seem like you’re bragging).

• Create a gratitude garland (see photo). Hang a ribbon in a doorway, and put a basket of colored paper squares below it, with pens and clothes pins. When guests & family members enter that room, ask them to write something they feel grateful for and hang it up!

2. Simplify. Instead of automatically going into holiday overdrive, take a moment to reflect on what is important to you, and make a plan to simplify your holidays. Here are some steps you can take to do this:

• List holiday-related tasks that are still undone that you think you “should” do (e.g., buying gifts, sending cards, decorating the house, hosting parties, etc.).

• Put a star next to the activities you are looking forward to doing. Put an X next to activities you wish you didn’t have to do.

• Edit your list. Which of these activities can you get away with not doing? What can you do to simplify these tasks? Who can help? What do you want to do more of this year? Consider one thing that probably isn’t on the list: RESTING and relaxing.

3. Remember what matters. ‘Tis the season to help others, and to give our children the opportunity to experience how much better it feels to give than to receive. (It’s true! Research shows that we getting a bigger happiness boost by helping someone else than we do when we are the receiver.)

This year, establish a family tradition that gives kids a chance to give back to their community, or to help others. My kids and I are putting together “care kits” for the homeless people that live near where we’ll go for a big tree lighting and some ice-skating in San Francisco. What matters most are other people, and the ways that we love them. This is the most wonderful time of year for reconnecting with our friends and family, and for telling them what we appreciate most about them.

*I helped design the Keep Good Going Report, which was conducted by Mathew Greenwald & Associates on behalf of New York Life.

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”
―Fred Rogers

Hat tip to Brené Brown for sharing this quote.

We are all heartbroken and sending love to the families in Connecticut. Lots of folks looking for resources to help know what to say to kids.  Here are a few links that I like:

– Brené Brown’s list (and approach) on her Ordinary Courage blog.
– This New York Times article for talking to kids about the disaster.