Happiness looks different to everyone, including your kids. Before jumping into becoming happy, you’ll need to define what happiness means to your family.

To build healthy and positive relationships, have a plan, be strong, foster hope and optimism and practise gratitude. 

Meaningful happiness isn’t just about feeling good; it’s about being the best individuals we can be. Creating environments in which your children can learn right from wrong and their own personal values and strengths, and teaching them how to practice this consistently with resilience and grit will set them up to develop character.

Building character is also about how we think about and treat others. In this episode we look at the foundations of helping your child become a good person: fostering the belief in something bigger than us as individuals; teaching your children empathy; practicing kindness and altruism; and teaching love to your children.

We all experience the growing pains of growing into yourself. This episode is all about setting up habits in order to help your children ease into this process a little smoother, including: defining your children’s strengths; recognition and management of weaknesses; accepting the reality of imperfection; authenticity; and practising effective communication.

Now that your children know themselves better, it’s time to look around and get to know the relationships around them. Instilling healthy boundaries, the ability to open those boundaries to discover new and exciting aspects of life, being friendly and compassionate, coping with change, and collaboration are all healthy habits to ensure the relationships around your children are happy and thriving. 

Life is full of change, setting your children up to deal with change early on will allow them to live life at their fullest capacity. This includes: instilling habits of recognition, acknowledgement and acceptance; having realistic expectations about growth and change and behaviour; reflection; and taking a long-term perspective and staying patient along the way.

Numerous studies suggest that children learn better, and ultimately perform better academically if they’re happy! Episode 8 looks into habits that encourage curiosity and fun, such as: making learning and growth fun and enjoyable; teaching curiosity; finding effective solutions; learning how you can best respond to your children’s failure; the habit of backing off and non-parenting; and the habit of fun and play.