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People
Tell Their Stories: Finding Happiness in Your Child by Stan
Goldberg, Ph.D. Excerpted from the
book Ready to Learn: How to Help Your Preschooler Succeed (Oxford
University Press) What do you think about
when someone says "happiness?" Usually, what comes to mind are
things, or outcomes. Happiness can be a four-car
garage in the suburbs, a high-paying job, an expensive new car, or a child who
becomes a successful professional. We have a tendency to externalize happiness.
It becomes something intimately involved in a thing or event. It becomes a goal.
Unfortunately, the path to that goal is often ignored. You had to have two
backbreaking jobs just to afford the mortgage on the house with the four-car
garage. That high-paying job was only possible by doing things in the workplace
you would find unethical in social situations. The new car could only be
purchased if you denied yourself simple pleasures over two years in order to
afford your new status symbol. And what about your child?
What would be required in order for you to feel happiness about what he or she
achieves academically, socially, or professionally? Once you associate
happiness with goals, both you and your child are primed for a fall. The goals,
many of which are unobtainable, become traps; if they can't be reached, neither
can your happiness. And by focusing on the goal, the path is often ignored. I
worked with a parent whose whole life was focused on getting her daughter into
a prestigious university. "It'll be worth it
if I can get her into Stanford or U.C. Berkeley. Maybe she could even go to
Harvard." The mother was aware her
daughter had a moderate learning problem. Since three, she had enrolled her
daughter in as many enrichment classes as could fit into a day: sensory
integration, speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, music,
cognitive focusing, and others with questionable legitimacy. Her daughter
enjoyed few of these activities. "Does Anita like
doing these things?" I asked. "That's irrelevant.
I want to give her the best chance possible to be accepted at a good
college." "But she's only
five," I said. "Yes," the
mother responded angrily, "But if I don't do everything I can now, she'll
never be successful." "But do you get any
pleasure now from what Anita is doing?" "That's not
important," she said, "Only the future is." Unfortunately, I wasn't
able to make any headway with this mother. Actually, she thought my
understanding was so off base, she sought someone else to work with her
daughter. Anita never made it to Stanford. Actually, Anita never made it
through high school. She viewed each of the things her mother wanted for her as
goals, most of which she wasn't interested in. The journey was so arduous the
goals became unimportant. She had no joy or happiness in any of them. If you
shift your search for happiness from the future to the present, from what your
child may be able to do in the future to what he or she can do now, from
goals to journeys, you'll find the happiness that eludes many parents.
Happiness is not something that's external to you. It's not the successes your
child has, or the intrinsic value of their accomplishments. Happiness is
something totally dependent on how you view things. There's the old joke about
two boys looking into a barn and seeing an empty stall filled with old
manure. "Ugh," the
first child said. "Look at all of that crap. It stinks." "Wow," the
second child said. "I know there must be a pony here somewhere!" Very rarely is something
inherently good or evil, ugly or beautiful, depressing or joyful. It's our
values and how we view them that attach meaning to events and things. Reprinted
from the book Ready to Learn: How to Help Your Preschooler Succeed
by Stan Goldberg, Ph.D.; Copyright © 2005 Stan Goldberg, Ph.D.; (Published
by Stan Goldberg, Ph.D.,is a Professor at
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