10 Strategies for Raising a Happy Child | Preventing Anxiety and Depression

You. Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery is designed for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for individualized professional assistance. If you are in Crisis, please call 911. I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation of Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes practical tools to improve your mood and quality of life. Today we're going to be talking about raising a happy child. There's so much going on in the news right now that deals with unhappy children, separation from children, of children, from their families at the borders, school shootings, all suicides that are increasing. It's just not a happy place right now. So I figured I'd spend an episode talking about ways we can raise a happy child and maybe get happier ourselves. So we're going to talk a lot about prevention today. In order to help children prevent unhappiness, we have to help them develop an emotional vocabulary. We have to help them develop self awareness, mindfulness and psychological flexibility. We have to assist them in developing empathy and compassion for other people, but also for themselves. We need to help them develop self esteem and self confidence. Educate them about unhelpful thoughts, you know, that inner critic that can kind of keep you stuck. Educate them about hardiness and that helps them bounce back when something goes wrong. Encourage them to develop good vulnerability prevention habits. And you know, we've talked about those before in terms of sleep and nutrition and exercise and that stuff. And teach them about distress tolerance activities, including the acronyms accepts or improves. So let's look at how to do that. So the first thing we're going to do is talk about helping them develop an emotional vocabulary. And some of us as adults don't even have great emotional vocabularies. So, you know, it might be helpful for us to encourage children to identify these things. By doing that, we're also going to have to look a little bit closer. So one of the ways that we can do that is using an emotions chart. When you do your mindfulness check ins in the morning at breakfast table and in the evening at the dinner table with your children, ask them how they feel, how their day went or whatever. And you know, for younger children, you can use a character emotions chart that has, you know, little people giving expressions. For adults and adolescents, an emoji chart is a really good thing because they're used to using emojis and they can kind of relate to those. But you can also use these emotion charts when you're discussing things with your children. Like how did you feel when your sister broke your toy? And the child may not have the words. They may kind of know it made them feel angry inside, but they may not be able to put the word anger with it. So we can have them point to the picture and, you know, how did you feel? Show me. They point to the picture that's angry, and we say, okay, you felt angry. And that helps them start learning how to use those words. You can also have children make a list of things that make them feel a certain way. So make a list of things that make you feel happy. Let's start with the good one. And for children who can't write yet, have them draw pictures. Or you can print out pictures of things that kids identify. You know, if you're talking, you say, tell me five things that make you happy. And you write those down. And then you can go online and find some clip art of those things, print them out, and then the child can use them to color on and make a collage. So that's going to be the happy collage. And then you can do the same thing for angry and sad and other things. That way, not only is the child learning to identify the feeling, but they're also learning to identify triggers for those feelings. And you're becoming aware of what some of their triggers are for those feelings, so you can help them deal with those things as they come up. For older kids, tell them they can go online and do a clip art collage of five things that make them happy. If they want to do that. Instead of writing a list, draw a picture of three things that make you feel. That's another activity that can get kids involved. And, you know, some kids love to draw, some kids hate it, so it's just an option. Another thing that actually has been researched and found to be really effective in improving mood is to have children write for 20 minutes a day about the positive things that happen to them that day. So have the children spend 20 minutes each day writing or drawing about the good things that happen that day. So if we teach children to really focus on the good things, then they're not going to be focusing as much on the bad things. That doesn't mean we don't want to discuss the bad things with them, but we do want to help them have a moment where they can focus and go, okay, yeah, there are some things that were really crappy today, but, you know, I got to go out to recess and I found a frog and whatever else it was that made them happy. I love frogs, so that would have been one for me. Another thing we can do is help children develop self awareness and mindfulness. And one of the things we talk about in mindfulness is something called monkey mind. And as adults we do it, and as children they do it too. It's when you're trying to do something like balance your checkbook or do your math homework or watch TV and your mind starts going all these other places instead of focusing on the here and now and what you're doing. And I do that even when I'm driving home from work and I have to kind of bring my monkey mind back into alignment and practice and consciously make an effort to focus on driving and seeing the hawks that are on the power line, etc. And I have a worksheet that created with obviously monkeys on it. And for older children that can write, I have them write down thoughts when they start having monkey mind. What thoughts are you thinking about? Write them down because when you get them out of your head, sometimes it's easier to stop thinking about them. But it also makes the child aware. We want to have children start identifying monkey mind because a lot of children will start thinking about, oh, you know, they're watching TV that evening and then they start remembering when they were in gym class and they accidentally passed gas or when they dropped their books in the hallway or they did something embarrassing and their mind keeps going back there. Well, we can help them train their mind to not do that. But they've got to be aware that they're having those thoughts and learn how to just acknowledge it and then return to the present. So what can we do? Do a check in again at breakfast and dinner. A lot of times we don't have lunch with our kids because we're at work and they're at school, but at breakfast, do a check in with them. How are you feeling? Do the emotions chart and what thoughts are you having? What do you need to have a good day today that gets them focusing on the here and now. And then you can even ask them, are you having any monkey mind thoughts and are you worrying about something for fourth period or are you still thinking about something from yesterday? You can talk about it right then and deal with it. And then at dinner time again, you can ask them, how was your day, you know, overall, what mood characterized your day? Or how do you feel right now? Have them identify that emotion and again, have them identify what they need to be happy, healthy and secure. That's all part of mindfulness. You know, that may mean they need some help with their homework. That may mean that they just need to be Left alone for a little while because they need to decompress and, you know, help them start identifying what they need. And they're not going to be able to do this. As young children and even sometimes as older people, right away, they may not know what they need. They feel icky, which isn't even technically an emotion. So we need to figure out what icky is and how to make icky go away. And that's when you start fleshing it out and talking about it. Another thing we can do is have them develop empathy and compassion for themselves and others. And a lot of times we focus on empathy for others, that we tell children they need to understand how Johnny felt when you stole his ball or how Sally felt when you didn't want to talk to her or whatever. But we also need to focus on empathy for ourselves. How did we feel? You know, how did have the child really reflect on how did I feel during this? And have empathy and compassion for themselves, recognizing that some days they're just going to have a bad day and be compassionate. If their best friend had a bad day, they wouldn't be expecting their friend to just get over it. Well, maybe they would. But we need to help them understand that sometimes we have bad days, and that's okay. Sometimes we're not on our A game, and that's okay. So have them start figuring out how to look at these things. One way we can help them develop empathy and compassion is the different and similar exercise. If they're having a challenge with a certain student at school. You know, talk about. Let's talk about all the things that the two of you have that are similar. You're both humans. You both go to the school, you both have parents. You know, just start. Start throwing out things, and then they'll jump in, and then you can start talking about, okay, let's talk about ways that you're different. And you know, I have two children at home, and they are polar opposites of one another. So we're regularly talking about similar and different. And my son will say, you know, I don't understand why she gets so upset about all of that stuff. So I. In order to help him develop empathy, we talk about, you know, okay, you're both similar. You've grown up in the same household, but you're different because she's more of an introvert and you're more of an extrovert. So, you know, certain things are more stressful to her and helping him appreciate the fact that, you know, things that are not stressful to her. Are very stressful to him and vice versa, so they balance each other out. Different and similar is a great way to help children learn and identify areas of compassion and see how, you know, people react differently. Another activity you can do is helping others feel better. And this is obviously something you're going to do more with younger children, but you ask them, how can you know how somebody else feels? And they may tell you that they listen to what the person says or ask them how they feel, or look closely at their face and body or watch what they do. We want to have them brainstorm. How can you tell how your friend feels when you're at school? What do you know that makes them become more aware? And you can't be empathetic until you're aware. So they get outside of themselves and notice how people feel. If they can't figure that out at first, ask them, how do you know how you feel? You know, when you're sad, what does that look like? What does that feel like? How would somebody know that you were sad? And they may say, well, because I'm crying or because I don't want to do anything, whatever they say. But okay, that's a place to start so you can brainstorm from there. Another question you can ask them is, how can we recognize when another child is feeling bad or left out? So again, a similar way to ask the same question. The third question is, how can we cheer up children who feel bad and help them feel better? And sometimes, you know, children are going to feel bad, sometimes people are going to feel bad, and there's nothing you can do to make that completely go away. If their dog died, if their dad just got deployed, you know, whatever it is, there could be something in their. In their life that is pivotal, that is going on that made them very sad. But most people, children and adults, tend to feel a little bit better if they get support, if they get compassion and empathy. So we want to encourage them. When they see somebody that's feeling sad, pay attention to them, pat them on the back, ask them if they'd like to play with you. Obviously, that's for littler kids with older people, ask them, do they want to have lunch with you or something in order to make them feel less isolated and feel like somebody cares about them. Those are all things that children and teenagers can do to be happier. Because when we help other people feel happy, we tend to feel happier. The next step is to teach love languages, and this helps with empathy and compassion, because demonstrating empathy and compassion can be a little bit challenging. Because not everybody speaks the same love language. What do I mean by that? I mean that when people are different, people will experience a feeling of love from different actions. So, for example, when my kids get up in the morning and they do their chores and they do just over and over and above on their chores, that makes my heart happy. You know, that is one of my love languages service. So when they do things in order to make my life easier or because they know it would make me happy, that's a way of communicating love to me. Words of affirmation, telling somebody that you love them, that works for some people. Gifts. Some people love gifts. Now, small children, you know, they love gifts, but that's more about the toy than about a feeling of love and compassion. But some people, even when they get older, one of the ways that they experience love is when they get gifts, when they get flowers or when they get cards or things like that. That's why Hallmark has never gone out of business. So gifts are one of those things. But not everybody responds to gifts. I'm not a big gift person. On Mother's Day, they're like, what do you want for Mother's Day? And nothing. I am perfectly happy to spend quality time with my family. And that's the next one, quality time. So what does that look like? Quality time for me means spending time with my kids, doing things that make them happy. If that means going on a hike or just sitting around watching movies all day, whatever. If I get to spend time with them and they're happy, that makes me happy. And, you know, sometimes I know that it's not their favorite thing to do, but they do it. And physical touch, hugs, kisses, pats on the back. That's big for some people. Other people don't like to be touched. You know, they're just like, okay, this is my personal space, and please don't invade it. So why do I bring this up? Because we all experience love in one or more of these ways or prefer to experience love in one or more of these ways. And other people experience love in one or more of these ways, but we may not experience it the same way. One of my best friends is one of his primary love languages is gifts. But that's one of my least important love languages. So if he were to give me gifts, it would be really nice, and I would understand it was coming from a place of love in his heart, but it's not a big deal for me. On the other hand, you know, if I was to do give him words of affirmation, or service, you know, that he'd like it, he'd understand it was coming from a nice place, but he'd prefer a gift. Thank you very much. So we need to help children learn how to communicate with one another. And you're thinking, well, kids don't have money, so they can't give gifts. Well, that's true, but they can write cards. I mean, how much does it mean when you get a little drawing that your kid made when he was in school that day? So there's a lot of things children can do if gifts is one of your love languages. But you also have to help them figure out what makes other people happy. And this is one that's a little touch and go for elementary school kids. But if you start helping them learn these five love languages early on, then as they grow older, they'll be well versed in all five of them so they can communicate appropriately. Additionally, when we're developing empathy and compassion, we need to evaluate expectations. And you see here on the graphic, I have somebody doing a pole vault. Well, we talk about setting the bar high, and a lot of times people will set the bar at a moderate level for their friends and their family and everybody else, but then they set the bar twice as high for themselves, so they can almost never achieve that goal, which makes them unhappy. So we want to encourage them to evaluate their expectations of others and of themselves. And then there's those rare children who set the bar up here for everybody so nobody can ever achieve it. And then that also makes them unhappy. So we want to help them look at what is a reasonable expectation for friendship? What is a reasonable expectation for spending time with you? What is a reasonable expectation for success? And have them really figure out what is reasonable, what is doable, so they're not setting that bar too high and making themselves unhappy. And they can have empathy and compassion for others when others don't make that bar, when others aren't able to get over the bar, they can have compassion for how hard it is, but they need to have compassion for themselves and not hold themselves to a higher standard. So they've developed empathy and compassion. Let's move on to self esteem and self confidence. Self esteem is that feeling that I'm a good person, I'm okay, I'm not perfect, but I'm a good person. And self confidence is that feeling that I can do this. You know, most things in life I can handle. Now, nobody can do everything, but they have confidence to know what they can do, what they can't do, and how to solve problems that come along. So how do we develop this in kids? Praise the child often for being an awesome person. They're going to make mistakes, but that doesn't mean they're not an awesome person. That just means they made a bad choice. Which brings us to separate choices and behaviors from the person. If the child makes a poor choice, talk about the choice. Not Johnny, you're a bad boy. But Joni, that was a really bad choice that you made. And I know you're a good person. So you know, or you're a really good kid. I'm wondering where that came from. Encourage and support children in exploration. In order for them to feel good about themselves and develop self confidence, they've actually got to get out of the nest a little bit and try things, which means they're going to fail sometimes and that's okay. We want to praise them for trying and encourage them in exploration and support them. Another thing that you can do as just an activity with kids is have them create an All About Me scrapbook. So on one page or a couple of pages, you might have them draw pictures or put cutouts. A lot of us don't have magazines anymore, so they need to get clip art from the Internet. But find a way to get pictures and they can put clip art of their talents on a couple of pages and then have another section, things that make me awesome. And it could be they love their long curly blonde hair. It could be that, you know, they like frogs or whatever it is they think that makes them an awesome person. And then have a third section that they add to consistently, like once a week, good things I did this week. And that helps them highlight the good choices they made all week. So they can keep this scrapbook going indefinitely. Then when they start having a bad day when they have a fight with their friend or they have a bad day at school or fail at something, you can pull out this All About Me scrapbook. And we can look at some of the good things that happened and some of the talents that the child has. Emphasize the fact that nobody's perfect and we all have strengths and weaknesses. And so it's helpful for them to see you be able to identify in yourself strengths and weaknesses. Educate them about unhelpful thoughts. And this is true for everybody. We need to be reminded, I know I do all or nothing thinking. Sally does this all the time or Joe never pays attention when I'm trying to talk to him or whatever the case may be. All or nothing uses extreme words and it talks about something Happening all the time, always, never those sorts of things. So we want to encourage the child or the person or ourselves to look for the exceptions. If I say that John never follows through on promises that he makes, well, it's rare that anybody does something all the time. So I want to look for exceptions to when John actually kept his word. That will help kind of buffer it a little bit. Now, does it mean that John's trustworthy? Not necessarily, but we do want to get out of all or nothing thinking. When children start to say, I always fail in math, I will never be good at math. Well, let's look at some exceptions. When are you good in math? What things did you do? Well, and let's build from there. The great thing about math is it's kind of scaffolding inherent in what it is. So if they could add, subtract and multiply, well, that's fabulous. If they started developing problems when you got to fractions, okay, then let's go back and let's look at fractions again. For the longest time, my daughter was really good at manipulating stuff, adding, subtracting, multiplying, even fractions. But rounding was her bugaboo and it frustrated her to no end because rounding was one of those skills that was back here. And she was up here with all the other skills. So we needed to work on that a little bit. But helping her see that she didn't suck at math, as she put it, that there was this one issue that was holding her back in being as successful as she wanted to be. But the exceptions were she could do all the rest of this stuff. Personalization. Now, remember that children tend to be very egocentric. Anything that happens, they think it has to do with them or it was a reflection upon them. So if the child comes home and says, you know what, Sally just bit my head off at lunch and then didn't sit with me, you know, that the child may feel attacked by that. They may feel that Sally did it on purpose, or they may feel that she's mad at them for some reason and they don't know why. So we want to look at what are some other explanations for why Sally may have been short with you at lunch? Maybe she just took a history test and knows she failed it so she wasn't feeling happy that day. Or, you know, maybe something happened at home. So what other reasons could there be for Sally being short tempered and not sitting with you at lunch besides something that has to do with you? Another example of personalization is, you know, Sally got mad when I Wouldn't let her copy my answers for the homework. I've heard that one before. So, okay, well, Sally got mad, that's okay. But whose responsibility is it to do homework? You know, if you take it as your personal responsibility to keep her happy and to do her homework, well, then what's her responsibility in it? So, yes, she's going to get mad, but Sally also has the responsibility for her own feelings and to recognize that it's her own responsibility and she can be mad at herself for what she did. And that may come out as anger at you for the moment, but so it's important to help people recognize. Help children especially recognize that they don't have the ability and they don't have the responsibility to make other people feel any particular way. You know, other people have responsibility for their own emotions and your child has responsibility for their emotions. Now, it doesn't mean that people aren't going to do things that make them feel angry, but it's what they do with those feelings. You know, you can feel angry for a second and then move on. Emotional reasoning is another unhelpful thought. So if a child is scared, you know, they're getting ready to start elementary school and that's a big step to go from kindergarten to first grade. And it can be kind of scary. If the child feels like it's going to be a scary thing, then they might start thinking about all the reasons it's scary and telling themselves all the reasons it's going to be a scary, unpleasant place. So we want to help them separate feelings from facts. You know, I understand you feel butterflies in your tummy. Let's talk about what that might be like. And is there anything to be scared about? Magnification is another one of those thoughts. So if your child gets into a fight with somebody and they think that their best friend forever is never going to be their best friend forever again, you know, it could be, but we all know that friends have disagreements and sometimes all out fights and some oftentimes get back together afterwards. So we want to talk to the child about how likely is it that Sally's never going to talk to you again and you know, kind of play through those sorts of things. The control fallacy, another thing that keeps a lot of us stuck when we think we can control another person's behavior. If your best friend is being mean, you know, there are things that you can do to protect yourself, but ultimately that other person is making their own choices. So what parts of the situation can you control if that person is being Mean, you don't have to tolerate it. You can say something to them. There are things that you can do, but you can't necessarily make them stop being mean. That's a choice they have to make. And finally, tunnel vision. Sometimes children get really upset and feel overwhelmed if they fail a test or something else happens and they're just like, oh my gosh, you know, I failed a test and I'm stupid and I'm never going to graduate. And da da, da, da, da. Alright, slow your roll. Let's take a breath here. Let's check the all or nothing thinking, you know, I'm never going to graduate. Probably not going to happen. That's highly unlikely. But let's look at what else contributed to your failing the test. Because you've done really well in school up until now. Why did you fail this test? Did you not study? Did you stay up late last night? Is this teacher particularly difficult? I remember in college I had one professor who was known for almost nobody in her class ever got an A. She conformed to that bell curve and that's unusual in graduate school. So you knew that things were going to be graded really, really difficultly hard, whatever. But have the child look at what else contributed to this. Is it, did you fail the test exclusively because of your knowledge or were there other factors that played in that are controllable? The next thing we can do is educate children about hardiness. And hardiness, you're like, well, what is that? It means commitment, control and challenge. And it's a theoretical concept that was come up with in the 70s, but it really has a lot of research behind it to support its efficacy today. So when something bad happens, you want to help the person identify what parts of their life are still good and rewarding. What things are you still committed to? This thing over here may be going south right now, and that's unfortunate, but what other things are you committed to that make your life worth living? One thing you can do with children and even with yourself is to keep a gratitude scrapbook. And each week add a page of three things that you're grateful for for this week that can help you remember the things that you're committed to. Keep a list of the things that are important for you to have in a rich and meaningful life. You know, if it's your kids and your family and your dog and, you know, whatever it is, your health, keep a list of those things. And then when something goes south, you know, you can go back and look and go, well, because of whatever this is that's going on right now. Am I going to lose any of these things that are important to me to have in a rich and meaningful life? A lot of times the answer is going to be no. You know, most of those things are still going to be there, and that can help you feel a little bit less devastated. Control. What parts of this situation, this unfortunate situation, do you have control over? Sometimes you have no control. If the company is going through sweeping layoffs, you may not have any control over that, but you do have control over whether you apply for new jobs or get paralyzed in depression. For children, you know, what parts of this do you have control over? If they try out for the football team and they don't make the cut, that can be devastating. You know, maybe they had anticipated that they were going to be the star quarterback, and that's what they always thought. And then they try out and they don't even make the team. Wow, that's a big blow. Okay, so have the child identify, you know, what things are important in your life, and football may still be there. And okay, football doesn't go away. It just means you didn't make it this season. So what parts of this do you have control over? Well, you can talk to the coach, figure out why you didn't make the cut, practice, develop those skills, and try out again next year. So we want to help them identify which parts they can control. They can't fix the fact that they didn't make the team this time. And the third part is challenge. Looking at this adversity, whatever is going on right now, how can the youth, how can the child view it as a challenge instead of a barrier? You know, a barrier is something you come up against and just can't get past. An obstacle is like an obstacle course. It's something that you have to either go over, around, under, through, do something, but you're able to get past it. You just have to figure out how. So encourage them to figure out, how can this obstacle to your goal be overcome? How is this a challenge and how will it make you stronger? And a lot of times children need our help as adults to coach them, to support them, to nudge them along the way, and to help them through the tough parts. And we call this scaffolding in learning. But let them do the parts that they can, and then when they get to this part that they're kind of, you know, losing traction, that's when we step in and give the assist. So hardiness is commitment to those things that are important. Identifying what parts of the unfortunate situation you can control. And identifying this unfortunate situation, an obstacle to goals and using it, figuring out how, it's a challenge to figure out how to overcome this obstacle. The next one is to encourage children to develop good vulnerability prevention habits. And we as parents are so responsible for this. From the time that they are knee high to a grasshopper, making sure they get enough sleep. You know, the amount of sleep children need is way more than most children get, you know, 10 to 12 hours. At the younger age groups, we need to make sure they're getting that sleep because that's when their brain develops, that's when their impulse control develops. That's when their cognitive and their body develops. They will likely experience distress and emotional delays if they're not getting enough sleep. Sleep is just so important, and it has to be quality sleep. But nutrition, our brain and those neurons and the chemicals in our brain and our hormones and everything else are built off of the foods that we eat. The amino acids and the vitamins and everything work to help make us who we are. So if we don't have good nutrition, our body can't do that. It can't repair it can't make the neurotransmitters to help you stay happy. You, you know, there's a lot of things that it can't do. So we need to educate children about adequate nutrition. And I've said this before, I'll say it a dozen times again. Adequate nutrition means eating colorfully. It means eating relatively healthy foods. It doesn't mean cutting out all fried foods and all pizza and all everything that children love. You know, they're going to want to have that sometimes, but they also need to have some fruits and vegetables and other stuff in there. They need to learn how to stay healthy. Because when we're sick or when we're tired or when we've got something else going on, if we're not healthy, we're generally not happy. So that means an average weight, not obese, not underweight, but something that is a healthy weight, as determined by you and your kid's pediatrician, about an hour's worth of exercise every single day. And that's really important. It helps with gross motor development. It helps in the secretion of serotonin, which is one of our happy chemicals. There's a lot of reasons that exercise is important. And it doesn't have to be at the gym. It can be playing, you know, going out and moving your body for an hour a day. And then we need to pay attention to the environment. What in the environment will help make the child happy. And what in the environment might be stressful? If your house is just a powder keg all the time, then it's going to rub off on the kid, and the kid is going to be stressed out all the time. So we want to make sure that this environment is calm and nurturing and welcoming and, you know, not too crowded and not, you know, they don't have cockroaches running over their leg while they're trying to sleep and, you know, those sorts of things. But these are all things that can help prevent vulnerabilities. And if you remember, vulnerabilities mean anything that creates the situation where a person might react more negatively to a situation. So if you wake up in the morning and you didn't get a good night's sleep, you're more vulnerable to being cranky that day. You're more vulnerable to having difficulty learning that day. If you don't have good nutrition, you're more vulnerable to being irritable. If your blood sugar is low, you're more vulnerable to being irritable. So we want to help children learn that these things are really important, but it doesn't mean all or nothing. It doesn't mean they have to, you know, be uber rigid about things, but they need to try to take good care of themselves in order to be happy. Finally, we want to teach about distress tolerance. And with young kids, obviously the ones who can't read, we need to do picture lists. So have them identify, for example, activities that they like to do that make them happy, and go online, print out some clip art, let them color it, and then you can make a chart of happy activities. So when Junior starts feeling stressed out or sad or something, you can have him look at that chart of happy activities and say, why don't you pick one of those things that you want to do, and we'll go do it right now. So teach them that sometimes life's just gonna suck and there's nothing you can do about whatever's unpleasant. But you can distract yourself, because dwelling on it, just dwelling how much it stinks, is not gonna change the fact. When my dog was killed, oh, my gosh, it was devastating. But sitting there thinking about it and dwelling on it wasn't gonna bring him back. It wasn't going to change the situation. So I had to involve myself in activities that helped me. Distract contributions is another thing. What can you do to help other people? For a lot of young kids, this isn't really their thing. But for older kids, that might Help them feel a little bit better if they volunteer at church or if they help out with their scout troop or something. Comparisons means looking at other people who aren't doing as well. And again, this is one I don't typically focus on, especially with children. I want them to focus on more distraction techniques than looking at how other people are suffering. But we got to stick with the acronym emotions opposite. So this is what things. It's not necessarily activities, but what things make you happy, because happy is the opposite of distress. So have them keep a list of things that make them happy. And it can be sunrises, it can be rainbows, it can be unicorns. If unicorns make them happy, then make sure you have a coloring book full of unicorns around. So when they're having a bad moment, they can work on coloring the unicorns or they can watch a movie about unicorns. Pushing away. Teach them that thoughts, you can put them in a box and you can push them away. Or when you start thinking about something, you can tell yourself, I am not going to think about that right now. So tell the little voice inside your head to talk to the hand. You can have happy thoughts. So encourage them when they start having an unhappy thought, to think of something happy. And again, this is with little kids especially. Have them keep a book of things that make them happy or happy thoughts that they can. That they can look at sensations. And that's, you know, hot, cold, something that kind of jolts you out of your funk, so to speak. So if they're in a really funky mood, maybe going and jumping in the pool, because the pools are almost never warm, that's just one of those things. But what sensations could help distract that person from how they're feeling? For some children, taking a warm bath works, but not a lot. So that's one that may or may not. So activities opposite emotions, pushing away and happy thoughts are four that work really well with young children. Other things that they can do, imagery. So if you ask them, you know, what is your. Tell me about your favorite happy place? What is it like? And ask them about all of their senses. And a lot of kids will need to be guided through this, especially young ones. Tell me about your favorite time that we went on vacation and what do you remember about it? What did it smell like? What were your favorite things that you saw? Do you remember what was in the back room of the cabin that we stayed in? I can't remember. Have them call in all of their senses. What did it smell like? In order to have them distract. If they're focusing on all of that, then they're not focusing on whatever the painful emotion is. Help them find meaning in whatever's going on. And this is easier said than done, especially with young children. Prayer can help with some children. Relaxation activities can help with some children. A lot of children have a hard time shutting off that monkey mind. So these, you know, more so with teenagers than young, younger children. Have them focus on one thing at a time. If you're getting ready to move, for example, which means they're going to leave their friends and they're going to leave their school, and they're going to leave their ball team, and they're going to leave this and that, and they're just like overwhelmed with all of these changes. Encourage them to take a break and take a breath and say, okay, let's focus on one thing at a time. We're moving. Let's talk about what is your new room going to look like? What color do you want it painted? And, you know, have them focus on that. And then, okay, you know, once we get there, we'll go take a look at your new school and, you know, maybe meet your teachers. How does that sound? And so encourage them to identify one thing at a time they can do to make it feel less scary. Vacation means taking a mental vacation from whatever it is. If they're working on their math homework and they just can't seem to get it and they are just totally frustrated and over it, all right, that's fine. Put it down. Why don't you take 15 minutes to take a little mental break and, you know, go get on Instagram or YouTube or whatever you do for 15 minutes and decompress, then come back to it. Because once the person has a bunch of adrenaline going through their system because they're frustrated or they're angry or they're anxious for some reason, they're not going to think. Well. And the harder it is for them to think, the more frustrated they get. The more frustrated they get, the harder it is for them to think. So encourage them to just step out of it and take a mental vacation for 15 minutes and then come back to it. And the final one is encouragement. When they are feeling stressed out, sad, angry, unhappy in some way, have them seek out encouragement. They can give themselves encouragement, but it is also important for us to give them encouragement to help remind them of the things that they are good at. Help remind them of the things that are good in their life. To be their cheerleader while they are getting through this really tough thing. My Son's learning to drive right now, so I'm trying to provide him when we do our driving practice, provide him encouragement while we're driving. When he does something really well, I try to make sure right then to say, you know, you took that turn really well, or you did that really awesome. So he's getting encouragement as he goes through it. And then we want to help them develop psychological flexibility. And this is something that most youth are not going to get until their, you know, middle school age because it's kind of obtuse. But basically you want the child to say, how do I feel right now? And they'll say, let's just say angry. Okay, you feel angry right now. And then in these four quadrants, you have them fill out. And a lot of times I have them do this when they're not feeling angry or something, when they're just kind of when they're okay, when they're content. When you feel angry, I ask them, what do you do? What kinds of things do you do that really don't help you feel any happier? And it could be watch tv, it could be eat, it could be go to sleep, whatever the child does. And then when you're feeling angry, what types of thoughts do you have that keep you feeling unhappy? And this is really hard for a lot of kids, so I don't spend a whole lot of time here. I may suggest a couple of things. And then in this quadrant up here, I asked them, what types of things? When you get angry, what types of things could you do that would help you feel happier? And, you know, maybe they go back to the list of activities and emotions and, you know, any techniques that you've taught them to help them deal with their emotions and deal with situations, things that they could do could even be ask an adult for help or ask a teacher, get tutoring, get better sleep. For my son, we're going through that phase where he's really trying to be a young adult right now, and he's trying to manage his own sleep schedule. So some days he has a bad day and I'm like, okay, you didn't have a great day today. What could you do? The future to help yourself feel happier and more alert and learn better and less frustrated. I could get enough sleep. Yeah, you could. So you want to encourage them. All those things that you've taught them up till now about vulnerability prevention and unhelpful thoughts and empathy and compassion, that all comes out in this chart with little kids, again, use pictures, lots of pictures. I love pictures because they can identify with them and then thoughts that I could have that could help me feel happier. And these are the thoughts that I'm a good person, my parents love me, I'm good at all of these other things right here. So going back to that their gratitude journal and their all about me journal can be ways to remind them to have those happy thoughts and those self empowering thoughts. So we can't guarantee that we're going to have the happiest child in the world, but there are a lot of things that we can do to help children be happier. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If we can teach children and you know, it would just make my heart so happy if we could start teaching a curriculum in elementary school to help children learn about unhelpful thoughts and empathy and compassion and communication, because that would prevent so much angst and problems as they grow up. If they had those skills that I end up teaching in therapy 20 or 30 years later. If they had those skills when they were in first grade and third grade and you know, obviously developmentally appropriate. But if as parents we can start teaching these skills, we can model these skills because remember, they learn a lot more from what we do than what we say. If we can model these skills, then they will start picking up on them and start practicing them and we will have our happier self as well as a happier child. By teaching children the skills we may not have learned until adulthood, we can help them avoid developing unhelpful habits that contribute to anxiety and depression. And like I said, remember, it's just important for us to model these behaviors, not just teach them. If you love this podcast, I would love for you to subscribe on your favorite podcast player. We're available on itunes, Google Play, Music, Stitcher and a whole bunch of others. You can join our facebook group@docsnipes.com Facebook or join our community and access additional resources@docsnipes.com.