Every parent wants their kids to be happy and well-adjusted. But unfortunately, many parents may not know what it takes to raise children who are not easily frustrated and have an overall positive attitude.

Many parents tend to be overly permissive in order to keep their children happy. While this may seem like a good approach, its disadvantages might get in the way of raising children into individuals with a progressive, healthy mindset.

This is because overly permissive parenting does not involve regulation or setting limits that foster positive behavior in kids. As a result, they often struggle with impulse control, which may lead to several behavioral issues.

So, how can you keep your children happy while ensuring they grow up with a responsible attitude toward life?

You can nurture positive habits that will help your children learn to find happiness. In this blog, we are going to discuss the seven habits of happy children, so continue reading.

Habit 1: They Are Proactive

Being proactive is a fundamental skill children should learn at a young age. Being proactive helps achieve goals, overcome challenges, and build healthy and positive relationships. Proactive children take control of their lives and, hence, have a higher confidence in their abilities and greater happiness.

Proactivity helps children:

• Take responsibility for their choices and actions
• Solve problems without depending on others
• Set realistic goals and work toward accomplishing those goals
• To be optimistic
• To be grateful for what they already have
• To be resilient

How to Nurture Proactivity in Your Kids?

As parents, you can perform the following activities to foster proactive behavior in your kids.

• Help them address negative statements about themselves: Children develop pessimistic perceptions about themselves when they attribute their failures or other unfavorable events to their internal quality. For instance, they may think of themselves as stupid upon getting poor grades. You can address this issue by encouraging your kid to think of alternative explanations and providing evidence that self-underestimation is not the right way.
• Encourage them to be proactive in the face of adverse events: Your child may be facing multiple problems in academics, sports, or social interactions. Instead of letting them deal with their problems without a clear strategy, you can ask them to create a list of solutions for every problem. Once the list is ready, ask them to pick solutions they think are most appropriate. While they may not be successful in every attempt, they will learn to think of solutions and never give up.
• Help them set personal goals: Proactive people set personal goals and work to achieve those goals. To encourage proactivity in your kids, you can encourage them to set goals and help them identify steps and key pointers that can help them towards accomplishing objectives. Create a list of goals and check off each one as it is achieved.
• Make them challenge negative thinking: Watch out for behaviors that denote hopelessness and other negative emotions in your child. These behaviors originate from negative experiences. But instead of letting them abstain from having necessary life experiences, you can encourage them to keep note of things that could lead to adverse events. With those points in mind, they will be able to move on and look forward to having new experiences.

Habit 2: They Begin Everything with the End in Mind

Having the end or conclusion of a task in mind helps remain focused on establishing goals. It is one of the fundamental habits to develop in children. With this habit, they plan and strategize steps that help them accomplish their goals.

Children who keep the end in mind do not become stuck and experience frustration for not being able to progress. This habit encourages them to reverse engineer the outcome of any problem and identify steps toward the solution.

Think of a jigsaw puzzle. Its packaging comes with an image of the solved puzzle. This image has been put there so the children would remember the outcome while playing. This makes it easy for them to solve the puzzle.

How to Develop a Keep-The-End-In-Mind Mindset in Children?

There are many other ways parents can help their children think of the outcome first and then identify steps to solve anything playfully. This not only develops problem-solving skills but also helps children learn to keep their frustration under control.

Here are the ways you can teach your kids to always keep the outcome in mind before starting any task:

• Be the change you want to bring: Children emulate what their parents or elders do. So if you want them to avoid distractions by keeping the outcome in focus, embrace the mindset of prioritizing goals. Your kids will follow suit.
• Help your children learn the value of delayed gratification: It is a good idea to tell your children why something good is worth waiting for.
• Set small goals for them: Your kid needs the confidence to achieve future success, and confidence can be built with a sense of accomplishment. The best way to help them develop this sense is to set small goals they can focus on. For instance, you can ask them to finish their homework on time before they can watch their favorite TV show. Don’t forget to acknowledge their accomplishment.
• Praise efforts, not just success: Your kid will succeed sometimes, and sometimes they won’t. What’s necessary for them to be reminded of is the importance of trying. The most effective way to do this is to praise their efforts, even if they haven’t been able to get the desired outcome.

Habit 3: They Put First Things First

Children, like adults, can get stressed when they fail to finish things on time. Teaching children to prioritize the most important tasks is an effective way to ensure they remain more relaxed. You can recall times when you were stressed or worried about failing to finish a certain task simply because you didn’t prioritize it the way it should have been.

Children who put first things first possess the following attributes:

• They are better at managing time and organizing things.
• They have impressive problem-solving skills.
• They are good at regulating emotions and have enhanced interpersonal skills.
• They are flexible and have greater adaptability.

How to Develop the Habit of Putting First Things First In Children?

Aside from becoming role models, parents should work on the following steps to cultivate the habit of prioritization in children:

• Formulate weekly plans: This involves creating a list of tasks that children must accomplish throughout the week. The contents of the list should be sorted based on their importance. Use a calendar to help the children with time management.
• Role-play about the consequences: For example, you can act as if you have failed a math test. Or, you can ask your child to imagine this scenario. This will help them understand the consequences of not being well-prepared.
• Encourage maintaining an activity log: Maintaining an activity log may seem like a boring task for kids. But with some gamification, you can make it a more interesting task. You can ask your child to use their creative abilities to decorate or design their weekly logs.

Habit 4: They Think Win-Win

With fierce competition in almost every aspect of life, many people tend to forget that there are enough good things for everyone. To ensure everyone has a fair share, it is vital to foster a win-win attitude. Parents can cultivate this same mindset in their children to make them happy and caring. This mindset also smoothens the relationship between the parents and children.

Tips for Parents to Develop a Think Win-Win Habit in Their Children

• Engage them in a healthy discussion: Explain how essential it is to be competitive, but not at the expense of relationships. Describe the pitfalls of trying to be a winner at home. Your children must be taught to think of solutions that benefit everyone. Not only will this help reduce problems at home, but your children will be happy.
• Settling sibling disputes: Encourage your children to adopt a win-win approach when resolving disputes among themselves. Make sure that you do not mediate; let them analyze the problem on their own and come up with a workable solution.

Habit 5: They Seek First To Understand, Then to Be Understood

Understanding others before being understood refers to listening before talking. Taking time to listen helps you process information in a better way, allowing you to reach a higher level of communication. While children may not be able to process information like adults, they can be taught listening as a skill.

Children who are good listeners find it easy to regulate their emotions and solve their problems. They tend to be more compassionate because they get a good grasp of others’ points of view. And this contributes significantly to their internal happiness.

How Can You Teach Young Children to Listen?

A few activities that you can perform to cultivate the habit of listening more in your children include the following:

• Listen to what your kid says for a few minutes. They might get frustrated at first and will be curious why you did what you did. Discuss everything you listened to and how they felt when you did not speak. Then, talk to your kid and have them ignore what you say. Tell them how you felt about it.
• Play a game where both of you try to convey messages through body language. Use gestures to represent emotions (sad, happy, bored, frustrated, etc.) without saying anything.
• Explain how varying the tone while saying a phrase can change its meaning. For instance, emphasize different words when you say, “I didn’t say you did it,” and tell your kid how it changed the meaning of the phrase.

Habit 6: They Synergize

Synergy involves combining good ideas and making them work better. It allows two people to work together and create a better solution that neither would have thought of alone. It can be referred to as “not your way or my way, but a better way.”

Like other habits above, the concept of synergy can be taught to children. The goal is to help them become good team players. However, it’s important not to confuse synergy with dependency. Your child should also be taught how to take the initiative and continue with the process on their own.

Synergy Activities for Kids

• Choose a problem and discuss it with your children, encouraging them to propose their own solutions. Make sure to describe the problem properly. Get their solutions and note them down, including the one you have thought of. Work with the kids to choose the best solution or combine all the ideas to create a better one.
• Create a 15-minute program during which you and all your kids drop everything and complete chores.
• If you have more than one kid, ask each to share a list of good habits of their siblings. Using these lists, work together to create a plan on how they can synergize on sports, homework, and chores. Perform the same activity using your child’s friends if they don’t have any siblings.

Habit 7: They Sharpen the Saw

“Sharpen the saw” is a specific term referring to creating balance in life. Its origin is a story of a man who was sawing a tree but wasn’t making any progress. When someone asked why he didn’t stop for a moment to sharpen the saw, he replied that he was too busy sawing the tree.

This story reminds us that productivity can be achieved only with balance. Your body, brain, and soul need time to relax in order to retain their ideal function.

Children’s Activities to Sharpen the Saw

• It would be ideal to dedicate a place in the home where children can spend their time engaging in unstructured activities. Fill this corner with puzzles, learning games, and storybooks.
• Take your kids outdoors to enjoy and appreciate nature. Outdoor activities have several benefits, such as reduced symptoms of depression, improved focus, and enhanced academic performance, all of which contribute to increased happiness.

Conclusion

Raising happy children with a sense of responsibility is a challenging goal that requires parents to be dedicated and focused. By nurturing the habits mentioned above, you can set your children up for a happy and prosperous future.

According to an article published in Forbes, kids today spend an average time of seven hours a day holding mobile devices or in front of screens. This has resulted in a wide majority of children swapping their outdoor activities with screen time, which makes their lifestyle more sedentary. Not only does it affect their overall health but also their quality of life.

Like most parents, you may notice your kids passing over outdoor play to get more screen time. It has been unfortunate that mainstream and digital media and influential parents have all focused on decreasing kids’ outdoor activities for years by giving them gadgets to play with.

Thanks to commendable efforts by Michelle Obama, the former first lady of the US, to launch the “let’s move” campaign in 2010, many parents now realize the importance of physical activity for their kids and other family members. Many parents still, however, require awareness of why it is so essential to get their children outside.

Parents have no ill intentions toward their children. They want them to be physically and emotionally healthy individuals with a sense of compassion and independence. However, they sometimes fail to realize on time that taking their kids outside is one of the most essential things to achieve said goals.

In this article, we have discussed some incredible benefits of encouraging children to play outside, so read on.

Physical Benefits of Playing Outdoors

Outdoor play during preschool and elementary years develops physical strength, regulates body weight, and enhances immune functions in children. And the best part is that children engaging in physical activities are more likely to carry over into their adulthood with more developed fitness-related habits. This is because children taking part in outdoor activities get trained to consider physical activity as a vital habit to continue during the adulthood years.

Improved Balance and Coordination

Children who play outside develop agility, coordination, balance, and many other advanced motor skills. These children develop a particular likeness to move in a way that challenges their muscles, skeletal strength, and overall body endurance. During their play outdoors, they find room to walk, run, and flex their bodies.

A More Proportionate Body Mass Index

In the 1980s, only 7% of the kids in the USA were found to be obese. But after about three decades, one in every three children met the criteria for obesity. This is because children today eat more and move less than children a few decades back.

Children who play outside more than others are less likely to become obese due to their more active lifestyle. Instead of sitting in front of the TV and computer for hours, they like to play outside and consume calories to remain in good shape.

Better Overall Health

Playing outside and preventing weight gain delivers numerous health benefits to your child. For instance, obese children are more likely to develop health conditions like sleep apnea, asthma, and, in later years of life, heart disease and diabetes. On the other hand, spending time in the sunlight and moving around enhances your child’s mood and strengthens their immune system. Outdoor activity can even benefit children with ADHD.

Vitamin D is called ‘sunshine vitamin’ because your body gets a lot of it when you are outside in the sun. Children usually need more vitamin D than they get from their diet, so letting them play outside allows them to get an optimum supply of this essential nutrient. All you have to do is to take your children out on a sunny day and let them play.

Muscle Strength

Several outdoor activities develop muscular strength in your kids. For example, swinging is one of the most common outdoor activities. This play engages your kid’s muscles that help them to sit up and hold on. Although this activity seems more repetitive, it is like an optimum fitness workout for kids. Several other sports, like riding toy bikes, skateboards, and scooters also encourage muscular strength in kids.

Emotional and Mental Benefits of Playing Outdoors

Research conducted at the Open University’s OPENspace Research Centre finds considerable evidence suggesting a strong correlation between playing outdoors and increased life expectancy, reduced symptoms of depression, improved well-being, and enhanced ability to perform in school.

Children who regularly play outside are better able to focus and learn, improve their behavior, increase productivity, and maintain healthy relationships.

This is because the outdoors is where children can be themselves at best. It allows them to vent their excitement by escaping from a more restrictive, quiet environment usually present at homes and schools.

Here is a brief explanation of the mental and emotional benefits of playing outdoors for children.

Reduced Anxiety and Stress

The way outdoor play helps reduce stress and anxiety in children has been established well in the study of biology. Outdoor activities allow children to get more sunlight, which helps them get more vitamin D. This helps release an optimal amount of serotonin in the brain.

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter linked with happiness and depression relief. Vitamin D deficiency prevents this neurotransmitter from being released, raising the risk of anxiety and depression.

Playing outdoors also helps reduce cortisol levels, a hormone that may trigger the feeling of stress and anxiety. Since children are more vulnerable to getting anxious due to flashing screens, academic pressure, and busier routines, getting them outside can help them remain happy and emotionally healthy.

Better Mood and Self-Esteem

Outdoor play allows children to get in touch with nature. When they are outside, they get to deal with natural materials, and that fuels their sense of creativity. Taking your children outdoors and letting them have some unstructured time to play invokes high-level thinking, which enhances their problem-solving skills. Not only does this improve their overall mood, but they also become more confident individuals. It also undoes the harmful effects of their everyday exposure to stressful environments.

Improved Memory And Concentration

Taking your children outside and encouraging them to play not only engages them physically but also gives them a good amount of mental workouts. Physical movement influences their hippocampus positively, improving their ability to learn and memorize things. Outdoor play also enhances their ability to pay attention to detailed information and improve focus on any given task.

Social Benefits of Outdoor Play

Not only does outdoor play helps children become physically and mentally healthy, but it also allows them to develop their social skills. Children, when playing outside, love to interact with their peers. This develops cooperation, empathy, and friendship among children, and they learn the importance of teamwork for success.

Here are the notable social advantages of playing outdoors.

Communication and problem-solving skills

Playing outdoors not only helps children improve their deep-thinking abilities individually, but they also learn to communicate to solve problems. For instance, figuring out how to fix that cubby house or stabilize a small structure requires deep thinking as well as cooperation. Moreover, soccer and other team sports necessitate each player to coordinate and act accordingly. When children engage in such activities, they try to figure out solutions and improve their communication to make things work out.

Positive Relationships

Outdoor activities not only help kids become more self-aware but also develop positive feelings about others. As a result, they take good care of what others feel. According to studies, children who play outside frequently are less likely to become bullies in later years.

Again, it comes down to teamwork and imagination, both of which are necessary to develop positive interactions among children. Children who get to practice more tend to find common ground to get along with their peers.

Outdoor Play and Environmental Awareness

One of the necessary traits of a responsible individual is positive and respectful behavior toward the environment. Do you want to foster this behavior in your kids? All you have to do is to take them outside and let them interact with nature in the way they like.

According to a study, playing outdoors promotes love of the environment in children, and they grow up as more responsible individuals with a caring attitude towards nature. 84% of the respondents in this study said that preserving the environment was a priority.

Taking children outside more frequently encourages them to take ownership of their actions and develop a deeper appreciation of natural blessings. This helps them realize the importance of caring for plants and animals and not littering in the open.

Conclusion

Given the benefits it offers, taking your kids to the playgrounds is more like the responsibility of parents who want their children to be physically, mentally, socially, and intellectually healthy. Not only does outdoor play make your children better at academics, but they also grow up as better human beings with a progressive and positive mindset.

A child at an early age spends maximum time with its parents. The basic schooling of a toddler occurs at home. Parents become their first teachers. Therefore, a child observes all the happenings under the house’s roof. 

In marital relationships, an argument between partners is much more common. No wonder how the healthy relationship between parents and the sophisticated environment of the house is, things do not remain the same always. 

Sometimes, a harsh conversation takes place between partners. In such actions or disagreements, parents themselves are first in harm. But, a child also does not remain immune to such events at home. 

Being an observer and a learner, a child is deeply impacted by parents fighting at home. It is observed that a toddler as young as six months old can be negatively impacted by parental fights. From mental health and self-security to social relationship-building, these arguments badly affect the child in the short-term and long-term.

Parental Fighting: A Common Phenomenon

Husband and wife spend most of the time with each other. They share numerous things and care for their children’s better living. Due to their long attachment, it becomes common among them to argue on any issue. Such arguments can be worse sometimes. Verbal aggression, physical aggression, and silent tactics are among the common methods. 

In some occurrences, the disagreement between them leads to separation or divorce. Thus, fighting between them directly impacts their relationship status and the house’s ambiance. Consequently, such a fight can negatively affect anyone living in the house. Children are also among those that are badly impacted. 

Researchers believe that not only toddlers but young adults up to age 19 can face issues from parental conflict.

Following major effects of a parent fighting on a child:

1.      Weaken Parent-Child Relationship: 

From birth, a child is too attached to its parents. Each act is aligned with the parents, and the parents know well its needs and desires. The conflict between parents weakens the bond between a child and parents. 

Parents become indulged in their issues and distracted from the child. As they are under stress, they do not heed the needs of the child. 

A stressed-out parent will not be able to act politely with the child as he/she does. Therefore, the parents fighting destabilize the relationship of a child with them.

2.      Hinder Cognitive Development:

The long-term fight between parents makes a child live in a tense situation for a long time. A child’s independence of thoughts is impacted. It becomes silent as time passes. It would not think of any critical thing due to a sense of fear in its mind. 

Its language becomes filtered, and his speech should be in broken form. In a nutshell, this condition hinders the child’s total cognitive development that remains till the elder age.

3.      Stressful Environment for Child:

The conflict or intense fighting creates a stressful environment in the house. In frequent overhearing, the child experiences hardships in the form of stress, anxiety, and depression. The child does not feel free to talk or share something. It fears talking with parents and becomes quiet in most cases.

4.      Raise the Feeling of Insecurity and Fear:

Parent fighting exhibits instability in the house. The sense of security among children is threatened as they lose the attention of both father and mother. The feeling of loneliness arouses, and a child fears to share what he feels. Also, his trust in his parents’ availability as a sign of security becomes weak in this situation.

5.      Compromised Performance :

When a child’s competence is hurt by parents’ conflict, one cannot expect better performance from them. Studies show that the ability of a child to solve problems and address any minor issue remains under threat. 

The continuous pressure created inside the house affects the performance outside. Not only is this, but the child’s performance in school is also compromised due to parents fighting. 

6.      Social Relationship Problems:

It is a natural phenomenon that a child starts learning from its own home. Each habit and trait that it experiences inside, it tries to practice. When a fight between parents occurs, they treat kids with unwelcoming behavior. 

So, there are chances that the kids may threaten others with such behavior or even hostility sometimes. Such behavior of a child creates problems in its relations with people.

7.      Experiencing Physical Issues:

Not only social skills and mental abilities but the physical disorder is also an effect of a parent’s fight on a child. Many studies have shown that children’s eating disorders, including anorexia and bulimia, are much more common during high parental discord. Parents’ fighting can sometimes worsen, so a child may face stomachaches and sleep problems.

8.      Behavioral Changes in Child:

Stress, aggression, and offenses inside the house change a child’s behavior. The parental conflict can make a child aggressive and reactionary. It will face conduct problems too. Studies observe that most children with antagonistic nature are impacted by domestic issues like parental discord. 

9.      Negative View of Life:

It is not a surprise to view a child with pessimistic thoughts when he encounters domestic issues. The same happens during parents’ fight, a child leaves, envisioning a better and happy future. 

Research published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence highlighted that the kids who witness parental conflict are more prone to suffer from low self-esteem.

10.  Effect on Academic Progress:

During parental fighting, parents sideline the study and academic progress. Parents take the least interest in a child’s schooling, and its academic activities go unseen by them. So, the child, too, feels no responsibility to fulfill schooling needs like homework and daily or weekly tasks. 

Helpful Tips to Protect Child from Effects from Parent Fighting:

As mentioned above, parental discord creates problems for children mentally, socially, and physically. Therefore, the following are helpful ideas to keep a child away from the effects of parental conflict.

• Discuss the issues privately.
• Remain concerned about child’s health
• Value child’s ideas and emotions
• Better schooling of a child
• Keep child away from fights
• Protect a child from any sort of abuse

End Notes:

Parental fighting severely impacts a child’s mental health and overall development. Any sort of parental conflict put effects on a child in the long term. Therefore, for a better nourished and healthy child, such discords should be resolved privately, and the child’s physical and cognitive development should be given due consideration.