Glitter & Razz Blog

By the way, this is not me. I am WAY more beautiful.

A number of years ago, Allison and I were visiting friends in Manhattan and Allison got into a great conversation with an old college friend of hers.  They hadn’t seen each other in awhile and they were catching up on their lives since college.  They had come to learn that the world is not necessarily set up to hand happiness over to you.  Happiness is not something we are owed.  Time and experience had revealed to these post-college young women that all of us must “fight to make ourselves happy.”

In reading the 3rd and 4th Chapters of Christine Carter’s Raising Happiness, I am even more convinced of the fact that happiness is not just taught and learned, it is also actively chosen. She writes, “I have learned that throughout my day I’ll have dozens of opportunities to change direction – choose between optimism and pessimism, for example, or forgiveness and anger.  Sometimes I cruise through the intersection, missing my turn.  There are lots of possible roads, but only some of them lead to happiness.”

She writes a lot about the choices we make – the things we choose to say, do, focus, and reflect on, that make a big difference in our life and our childrens’ lives.  This is why I love using the theatrical process to teach these kinds of social/emotional skills.  The craft of making theater is all about choices.  The great actor teacher, Sanford Meisner said, “Every little moment has a meaning all its own.” An actor’s job is to be aware of every moment and recognize that she has a choice to make in that moment and that that choice will bring about a response in her fellow actors and, ultimately, with the audience.  This constant attention to these choices is what distinguishes a great actor from an okay actor.

And I believe that this constant attention to the meaning in every moment – and then making an intentional choice towards gratitude, forgiveness, passion, learning. etc. – is what distinguishes happy people from the rest.

This post is part of a series of posts as I read Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps For More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents in preparation of our event with the author, Christine Carter, PhD on March 20.  Click here for more information and to register for the event>>>

If I had to pick the one thing that matters most to human happiness, I would say that our relationships with other people matter more than anything else.

Step #2 in Christine Carter’s Raising Happiness is entitled “Build a Village.”  This chapter breaks down why it is so important to your child’s overall health and happiness to be positively connected to other people and how you can help him/her be that way.

Inspired by this chapter and my own personal experience working with hundreds and hundreds of likable and unlikable kids, I care share with you the top 5 things you will want to teach and practice with your kids to make sure they have the social and emotional skills to be liked by and connected to other kids.  And yes, it can be taught!

1) Active Listening
Listen when someone is talking.  Make eye contact.  Ask the other person questions.  You know for yourself that you feel more important, valued, and appreciated when someone is really listening to you.  When you are with someone who makes you feel appreciated, you will most likely like that person, right?

I think this is the number 1 thing we can do to teach kids to be connected to other kids because it is so easy to teach.  All it takes is practice.  The reason why I see so many kids who don’t do this is because we don’t expect that they can.  But they can.  Even 4 year olds can.  I take that back…ESPECIALLY 4 year olds can.  4 year olds are just coming to the time in their lives when they understand the power and appeal of friendships.  Developmentally, they are shedding their completely self-centered ways and starting to believe that other people can actually be interesting.  This is the perfect time to teach them and practice active listening:

• Insist that your kids give you eye contact when you are talking to them.  Here’s the trick – make sure you give them the same courtesy.
• Coach them through a 2-sided conversation.  For example, “I just asked you how your day was and I listened to your answer.  Now, it’s your turn to ask me how my day was and you will listen to my answer.”  Here’s the trick – don’t talk too long.  They are only 4.  They will get bored.
• Celebrate them every time they are actively listening.  “Thanks so much for listening to me talk about my day.  I feel very special when you do that.”

2) Self Regulation
We know that kid that gets angry and frustrated all the time and takes it out physically and verbally on other kids.  We also know that kid who cries and whines all the time whenever something doesn’t go her way.  These kids are hard for other kids to be around.  For obvious reasons.  These kids need to learn how to control their feelings in healthy ways.  The main way for you to help them is for you to make it VERY clear, on a consistent basis, that their behavior is not okay.  Check out this cool article from PBS Kids that says, “From the start, set clear limits and provide simple explanations (”No biting. That hurts mommy.”) As your baby grows, try to be consistent as you express expectations and set rules or consequences.”

At Glitter & Razz, we begin each class and camp with a community circle where the kids have to experience a moment of silence together.  We talk about how this is the time for them to transform their free play energy into focused energy.  It’s a very successful practice.  Most of the time kids take this moment very seriously.  However, when they don’t, it’s a wonderful opportunity for modeling and reinforcing self-regulation.  The rule is to be silent.  That’s the boundary.  Any behavior outside of being silent is not tolerated.  So, when someone laughs or makes a silly noise or even breathes too hard, we either start the moment of silence again or we ask that person to step out of our circle.  This is teaching the kid that it is up to them to take care of themselves and that certain behaviors are appropriate at certain times.

3) Navigating Conflict
Kids will fight.  As Christine Carter points out, kids are more comfortable with conflict than adults are.  Conflict is not a problem.  Conflict is a good thing.  The problem is that kids have not yet learned how to work through conflicts.  It’s our job as adults to teach them.  People who can work through conflicts in peaceful, loving ways are well connected people, indeed.

We use a Peace Place to work out conflicts.  It’s a dedicated part of the room where a script hangs on the wall that helps kids work through conflicts.  It’s a classic I-Statement: I Feel___When You___I Need You to___and I promise I will____.

Read this to learn more about what Christine says about this.

4) Kindness
As a transition from “Kids Choice”, our free time time, to focused class time during our camps, we often give the kids an opportunity to share a celebration of someone who was kind to them during  Kids Choice.  We hear stuff like, “I celebrate Sarah because she played with me” or “I celebrate Ben because he helped me clean up the animal toys even though he wasn’t even playing with them.”  Kids appreciate kindness and generosity and want to be around it.  Christine writes in her book, “My guess is that most parents hope their children are kind, but few deliberately teach kindness in conscious ways.”  But, like all of  these skills, kindness can be taught if we as adults are modeling kind behavior ourselves, telling our kids what it looks like, and celebrating them when they do it.  “Raising Happiness” is chock full of ways to teach kindness to our kids.  Here is another good article I found online.

5) Play and Have Fun
Kids like kids who they can play with, have fun with.  This may seem like a no-brainer but we are seeing more and more instances of kids who just don’t know how to play.  We know the story.  Modern kids are overscheduled, have a lot more distractions, spend less time outside, spend more time isolated from other kids, etc. etc. etc.  My 8 year old niece once told me about a girl in her class at school that she didn’t like very much because, “she has no imagination!”

Kids, whose only real work IS to play, to make-believe, are coming to us at Glitter & Razz not very good at it.  When prompted to use their super power of imagination to make up stories or games or simply to play with wooden blocks or plastic animals during Kids Choice, we hear “I don’t know” or “what should I do right now” more often than feels natural. In these situations, our job as adults is not to tell them what to play.  That does not let them learn how to play.  My teachers and I just keep asking questions – questions that will inspire their creative muscles:

• Only you know what to do.  What do you think you should do right now?
• What does this block remind you of?
• What can you do with these blocks?
• What would happen if a zombie came in the room right now?
• What would happen if a zombie came into our story?

The play must come from them.  From their ideas and their imaginations.  The more they use their imagination muscles, the stronger they will be.  And the stronger they are at playing, the more fun they will be to the other kids.

This post is part of a series of posts as I read Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps For More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents in preparation of our event with the author, Christine Carter, PhD on March 20.  Click here for more information and to register for the event>>>

It’s such a simple idea: The happier we are, the happier our kids are.  Christine Carter calls it “Put on Your Own Oxygen Mask First.”  From her book:

Our own happiness as parents influences our children’s happiness in a variety of ways.  Extensive research has established a substantial link between mothers who feel depressed and “negative outcomes” in their children, such as acting out and other behavior problems…Children imitate their parents’ emotions as early as six days old…so if we model happiness – and all the skills that go with it – our kids are likely to imitate what we do.

What do you do just for yourself to make sure that you have the oxygen you need?

This post is part of a series of posts as I read Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps For More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents in preparation of our event with the author, Christine Carter, PhD on March 20.  Click here for more information and to register for the event>>>

I just received my copy of Christine Carter’s Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps For More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents. And I am excited beyond belief that Glitter & Razz will be hosting Dr. Carter next month for a book reading like none other. In our interactive learning event for whole family, parents will be in one room learning directly from Christine, hearing her read from her book, and asking her questions.

Meanwhile, downstairs in the Glitter & Razz Dramatic Play Space, their kids will be working together to create their own original play that explores what a happy childhood means from their perspective.

Christine’s thesis is that “happiness is a skill that we can teach our children.” And this book breaks down all kinds of ways to do just that. I love everything about this because we share this same idea here at Glitter & Razz – that if we provide safe but challenging spaces for kids to learn the social and emotional skills to improve their lives now, it will serve them for life and ultimately improve the planet.

Christine says it best at the end of her introduction – “When we become better parents, our world improves measurably. In our materially rich but spiritually sparse culture, we often forget that this work we do as parents is important, essential. It matters - for our children’s well-being and for the greater good of the world.”

I am reading the book now in preparation for the event.  Get your copy now or at the event from Diesel, A Bookstore right here on College Avenue.  And please read along with me.  I will be posting stuff I find interesting as I read.  I’d love to hear your comments.