Boost teenage happiness with praise, clear rules, a healthy family lifestyle, and warm family relationships.
Happiness is a state of mind or a mood. Teenagers are usually happier when they’re satisfied with their lives and relationships, although nobody is happy all the time.
Wellbeing comes from physical, mental and emotional health. It’s also about understanding your emotions, taking part in different activities, having good relationships and social connections, finding meaning in life and feeling that you’re doing well.
Happiness and well-being are related, but they’re not the same thing. There are no clearly defined links between them. Teenagers can be happy because of some of the things that make up well-being, but they don’t need all these things to be happy.
Boosting teenage happiness: tips
You can boost your child’s happiness with praise and encouragement, clear rules and boundaries, a healthy family lifestyle and warm family relationships.
Praise, encouragement and positive attention
Give your child praise when he behaves in ways you want to encourage, like helping out, doing chores or getting homework done. For example, ‘I really appreciate it when you put your dirty clothes in the laundry bin’.
Give your child attention. For example, go to watch her playing sport, send her a friendly text message or just give her a special smile.
Encourage your child to try new things. For example, if your child is interested in playing a new sport, you could offer to take him along to the local club’s registration day.
Value your child’s strengths, and praise her for who she is. For example, ‘You’re really good at looking after the younger children in your Scouts group’. This helps to build self-esteem and protects her from comparing herself to other people.
Let your child know that you’re proud of him when he tries, especially when things are tough. For example, ‘I was so proud of you for running all the way in your cross country race, even though I could see you were tired’.
Rules and boundaries
Clear and fair rules help teenagers feel safe when lots of things in their lives are changing. If you involve your child in making the rules, she’ll be more likely to stick to them. Negotiating rules with your child is also a way of showing that you respect her growing maturity.
Healthy lifestyle
Encourage good sleep habits: teenagers need about 8-10 hours of sleep each night.
Help your child aim for at least 60 minutes of physical activity each day.
Encourage your child to make healthy food choices to fuel his growth and development.
Help your child keep a healthy balance between study, work and play. This might mean looking at how many nights your child is out doing things, how much down time she has, how much she can contribute to family life through chores, how many family meals you have together and so on.
Family relationships
Share and make memories together. For example, take photos or videos on special family days or at school events and look over them with your child, or talk about and remember things you’ve enjoyed as a family.
Make time to talk about individual and family successes. For example, you could try going around the table at family meals and giving everyone a turn at sharing something that went well for them during the day.
Establish and maintain family rituals. For example, cook pancakes on Saturday mornings, watch special movies together, go for milkshakes after school on Fridays and so on.
For older teenagers, happiness depends a lot on having the freedom to make choices without too many restrictions – although they still need you to monitor what they’re doing. It’s about being respected, developing independently of parents or carers, making their own friendships and social life, and being taken seriously as individuals.
Culled from raisingchildren.net.au