7 skills that will make your child happy

Almost every parent wants children to be able to do well in life, have self-esteem and feel happy. Here are 7 skills that are one of the most valuable things you can pass on to your child.

1. Coping with difficult emotions such as anger, anger, sadness, bitterness, feelings of rejection. Life is not “strewn with roses”. Even if parents try to remove every obstacle or annoyance from the path of the child, they will not save from painful situations and emotions. So it is better to prepare the child so that he can cope constructively. Remember that feeling unpleasant emotions is normal, and suppressing them leads to additional suffering.
2. Learning to tolerate frustration. When parents immediately satisfy every whim of the child, then he does not have the opportunity to teach to cope with frustration, irritation, impatience. Nobody gets everything they want. Others do not always meet our expectations. Even if our dreams finally come true, it will take a lot of time and effort. If parents don't teach their children to cope with frustration when they don't get what they care about, they are doing great harm to their children. People who have a low tolerance for frustration as soon as something doesn't go their way, they tend to be irritable, they get carried away by negative emotions, they blame others, they give up too quickly. They have trouble acting consistently or give up on challenges altogether.
3. Getting up after defeats. Even people who have been stunningly successful have also experienced the bitterness of failure. Geniuses, too, had many failed attempts before they made the breakthrough. In any competition, more people lose than stand on the podium. If parents tell the child that “he is a born winner,” then such a man has little chance of achieving anything. Even if he is extremely talented, he will give up at the first setback. The greatest tragedy occurs when a child is so unable to bear failure or rejection that he makes a suicide attempt. It is extremely important for parents to maintain a healthy balance between supporting the child, seeing potential in him, giving positive feedback and reinforcing high self-esteem, and forming a realistic self-image in the child and preparing him for the fact that no one always succeeds in winning. Even the most outstanding individuals! Unfortunately, it happens that when a child develops the belief that “he will always be a winner”, then he very painfully experiences all the failures that inevitably arise in the life of each of us. Sometimes, when faced with problems with achieving a goal, self-esteem completely collapses, because it was built on unrealistic expectations of oneself and the world.
4. Willingness to make decisions and bear their consequences. Life consists of making decisions. Some of them will affect our whole life - for example, choosing a profession, a life partner, taking out a loan. If parents do not allow the child to make age-appropriate decisions or confront the child with the consequences of his actions, or worse, make fun of him when he makes a mistake, then they will instill in the child a paralyzing fear of accepting responsibility for his own life and a lack of faith in his own strength. They can even lead to the onset of the syndrome of learned helplessness or the so-called dependent personality, which is characterized by the need to submit to someone's care even in adulthood, being extremely submissive, difficulties in making even everyday decisions and lack of confidence in oneself. Some of our decisions will be wrong and cannot be eliminated. So it is worth forming in the child the ability to make independent choices, learn from mistakes and maintain self-esteem even in the face of failures.
5. Mental resilience and ability to cope with stress. The fact is that we differ in the level of resistance to stress. From birth, we can see that some people are more sensitive or even neurotic, while others function much better in difficult situations. However, no matter how strong a trait of our personality is neuroticism, a huge role in building mental resilience is played by patterns brought from home and work on ourselves. There are many ways in which parents can help children strengthen psychological resilience, the ability to cope with difficult situations and to pick themselves up after emotional crises.
6. High and stable self-esteem. Many of the problems in my personal and professional life that clients come to me with are actually due to low or unstable self-esteem and dependence on the opinions of others. Strong self-esteem is not narcissism, introspection, or an unrealistic belief in one's greatness.
7. Healthy optimism. It has nothing to do with “hurry-optimism” or wishful thinking. Healthy optimism is not about dismissing problems, uncritically believing in only good scenarios, or waiting for a miracle. As Professor Martin Seligman, one of the founders of the positive psychology movement, wrote: “Positive thinking is not a shield to protect us from evil, but a tool that will allow us to regain the belief that the bad streak will soon be over if we take active measures to deal with the problem.1” Wisely understood optimism is based on a realistic assessment of the situation, a positive attitude and the belief that it is worth trying, and on active action - and not on the expectation that “the universe will take care of everything for us”...

If we do not develop these attitudes in ourselves in childhood, then in adult life it will be very difficult for us. We will experience a lot of additional pain and bitterness. Parents can help us develop these competencies or hinder this process.

Of course, we can build these skills at any point in our lives — even when we are very mature. However, over time, this will be an increasingly difficult and lengthy process. So it is worth equipping children with these advantages, because it will pay off throughout their lives and will save them a lot of suffering.