Sometimes, they need carefully calibrated danger

How does this clip of a teenager falling off a horse make you feel?

If you are like me, you probably winced, and maybe even felt vicarious pain. My mama-instinct is to protect that kid, to get him up and on safe ground. But here’s the thing: Teenagers need opportunities to get bucked off horses (or the equivalent) if they are to thrive. Here’s why:

Adolescence is a time of enormous physical, mental, and emotional development. Few people realize, though, how out-of-sync the timing of adolescent growth-spurts are, or the huge implications this wacky timing has for what teens need from the adults in their lives.

Continue reading this post here–-on my Greater Good Science Center blog–to learn more about the dramatic changes that happen at the onset of puberty and how we as parents should support our kids.

Are you happier on the weekend?

Most people are, according to a new survey of 1,000 Americans about their “weekend state of mind.” The idea that most people are happier on the weekend than they are during the week is not particularly revolutionary, but weirdly, this finding made me realize that in some ways I’m actually happier during the week than I am on the weekends. (The survey was commissioned by Hampton Hotels, and I was paid as a consultant to review the results.)

I know that I’m lucky to get so much joy from my workweek and weeknights with my family. By comparison, though, the multi-tasking that weekend parenting often demands — as well as the sometimes near-total deviation from our comforting routines — can make me more cranky and irritable than I am during the week.

My experience seems strange in that for the majority of people surveyed, happiness and feelings of satisfaction peak during the weekend, while stress drops dramatically. For example, 32 percent of respondents feel stressed out on Mondays, but only 8 percent on Saturdays.

It is worth noting, however, that in general parents don’t always to reap these benefits of the weekend: The survey found that parents are considerably more likely to feel exhausted during their weekend or anxious at the start of the weekend than are people without kids. So maybe my experience isn’t so strange.

The majority of survey respondents report pretty large “personality changes” over the weekend, saying that their “weekend personality” is more spontaneous, imaginative, creative, fun, and easy to be around—and that their “workweek personality” is more neurotic and less engaged. A third of participants say they are “a completely different person on the weekend.”

Reading about these “personality changes,” I had an “aha” moment: My weekend routine doesn’t always work for me.

I realize this probably would be blazingly obvious to anyone who knows my routine: frantically trying to run all my errands, carting kids to and from birthday parties and sporting events, fixing things around the house, paying bills and squeezing in some hasty gardening, getting caught up on email and grocery shopping and school forms — all while trying to “be present” for my children. But I’ve been so busy trying to master my weekends that I’ve forgotten how easy it should be to enjoy them — and I suspect I’m not alone.

As is the case for many parents, weekends are low-hanging fruits of happiness that I’ve been forgetting to pick.

Want three ways to make weekends even happier? See this post on my Raising Happiness blog at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center.

“YOU ARE THE MEANEST SISTER IN THE WORLD!!!”

My children are upstairs in the room directly above me, putting together a puzzle and fighting. I just heard a loud whap. Now there is crying. Also screaming. Our sitter is issuing time-outs.

Ah, siblings. My kids, 22 months apart, are best friends more often than not. But the recent winter break tested their love, to put it mildly. By the end of two-weeks spent mostly in each other’s presence, a typical exchange had Older Sister declaring “I am SICK OF YOU,” followed by Younger Sister screaming “GET AWAY FROM ME! Just get AWAY from me!”

I find this horrifying.

Meanness—to your sibling, or anyone, ever—is not a happiness habit.

What to do? I know that most siblings fight, and that social scientists have consistently recorded high levels of hostility in sibling relationships relative to other relationships. But this is not okay with me; I want my kids to be kind to each other. My dad and his brother are lifelong best friends and business partners. My brother and I are close friends. I want this for my kids, too. But how?

Fortunately, we parents of multiple children have some good science to guide us. Here’s what I take away from this research.

1. Treat kids fairly.
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2. Emotion Coaching is really important.
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3. Give them positive opportunities to play.
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4. Role-play positive responses to conflict.
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5. Think twice before intervening during a conflict

According to John Gottman, one of my all-time favorite researchers, emotion-coaching is the key to raising happy, resilient, and well-adjusted kids. His research—30 years of it—shows that it is not enough to be a warm, engaged, and loving parent. We also need to emotion coach our kids.

Emotion-coached kids tend to experience fewer negative feelings and more positive feelings. The three steps below are adapted from Gottman’s book Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, which I can’t recommend highly enough.

This first step to coping with negative emotions (in yourself, your children, or in your mother-in-law) is to figure out what they are feeling and to accept those feelings. Even if we don’t accept the bad behavior that often accompanies negative emotions, we still want to send the message that all feelings are okay, even the worst ones. Terrible feelings like jealousy and fear and greed are invitations to grow, to understand ourselves better and to become a better person. When you see these “undesirable” emotions in children, think of them as opportunities to both learn more about their inner-world and—importantly—to teach them how to deal with negative emotions now and in the future.

Step One: Label and Validate the Feelings-at-Hand
Before we can accurately label and then validate our children’s feelings, we need to empathize with them—first to understand what it is they are feeling, and then to communicate what we understand to them. This is simple, but not always easy.

Say Molly is feeling bad because she got into some trouble at school for talking too much in class (no idea where she might have gotten that tendency). Kids frequently displace negative emotions onto their loving parents and caregivers, meaning that while Molly might be mad at herself, a classmate, or her teacher, it would be normal for her to displace that emotion onto me when she got home. So when I tell her she can’t have a playdate with Claire right that second, it provokes an angry fury, during which she throws her backpack against the wall I’ve asked her to hang it on and calls her sister a “stupid idiot” she would never want to play with “in a million years.”

Instead of dealing with the bad behavior right away (time out!) this is a terrific opportunity to accomplish the first step in emotion-coaching: validating and labeling the negative emotions.

Me: “Molly, I can see that you are very angry and frustrated. Is there anything else that you are feeling?”

Molly: “I am SO SO SO MAD AT YOU.”

Me: “You are mad at me, VERY mad at me. Are you also feeling disappointed because I won’t let you have a playdate right now?”

Molly: “YES!! I want to have a playdate right NOW.”

Me: “You seem sad.” (Crawling into my lap, Molly whimpers a little and rests her head on my shoulder.)

I’ve now helped Molly identify and label several feelings: angry, frustrated, disappointed, sad. The larger our children’s emotion vocabulary is, the easier it is to label emotions in the heat of the moment. I have also validated how Molly has been feeling: she knows I think it is okay to have felt all those “bad” things. Interestingly, now she is calm, tired—clearly needing a snack and a cuddle.

To continue on to steps two and three, see my post on the Greater Good Science Center.