Monday, August 23, 2010

Happiness and Joy (Children and Family)

"The secret of happiness lies not in the act of creating joy. The secret of happiness lies in recognizing joy when it comes". KERRY PATTERSON

"Happiness is found in little things: a baby's smile, a letter from a friend, the song of a bird, a light in the window."  Franklin

"All who joy would win must share it.  Happiness was born a twin."  Byron

Discussion:
The key to happiness for children is closely linked to everything already discussed under stress, the development of positive and strongly embedded character traits, and healthy physical (to include chemical) balance. It is also, often closely linked to happy married parents as you will see in some of the research listed through the supplemental material.  (This does not mean that a child cannot be happy with one parent or that single parents cannot be happy.)

To search for additional information; please feel free to use the Google Scholar and Parenting search engines below.

You will also find a great deal of additional and supplemental information through the links listed here:
Healthy bodies, happy children
Happy Parents, Happy Kids
Raising Happy Children
What Does It Take to Raise Happy Children? - Character Development - Parenting - Family Resource
Child-rearing Improves Married Happiness
Married With Children The Key To Happiness?
The Effect of Children on Happiness: The Latest from the Research
Strengths of character, orientations to happiness, and life satisfaction
A central construct within the positive psychology literature is life satisfaction. Whereas adult life satisfaction has been studied extensively, the life satisfaction of children and adolescents has only received attention more recently.
Zest and work
This special issue examines strengths of moral character and their relationship to happiness
Who benefits the most from a gratitude intervention in children and adolescents?
The presence of the 24 character strengths in the VIA Classification and the level of child’s happiness were coded with content analysis.     

Quotes:
Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky


What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner. ~Colette

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet. ~James Openheim

"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called. ~A.A. Milne

Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible. ~St. Augustine

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self? ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. ~Abraham Lincoln

We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. ~Frederick Keonig

It's never too late to have a happy childhood. ~Berke Breathed

Happiness is a direction, not a place. ~Sydney J. Harris

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. ~Dalai Lama

There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness. ~Lady Blessington

The best vitamin to be a happy person is B1. ~Author Unknown

Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone. ~Sigmund Freud

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not. ~George Bernard Shaw

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years. ~Bertrand Russell

The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment. ~Doug Larson

My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy. ~William Shakespeare

Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy. ~Gretta Brooker Palmer

Happiness is a way station between too little and too much. ~Channing Pollock, Mr. Moneypenny

The happy have whole days,
and those they choose.
The unhappy have but hours,
and those they lose.
~Colley Cibber

The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things. ~Ernest Dimnet

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. ~George Bernard Shaw, Candida, 1898

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate. ~Thornton Wilder

If you are not happy here and now, you never will be. ~Taisen Deshimaru

If the day and night be such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more immortal - that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Eden is that old-fashioned house we dwell in every day
Without suspecting our abode until we drive away.
~Emily Dickinson

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. ~Joseph Addison

There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do. ~Freya Stark, The Journey's Echo

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

In order to have great happiness you have to have great pain and unhappiness - otherwise how would you know when you're happy? ~Leslie Caron

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. ~Mahatma Gandhi

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit. ~Hosea Ballou

Some pursue happiness, others create it. ~Author Unknown

You need to learn to be happy by nature, because you'll seldom have the chance to be happy by circumstance. ~Lavetta Sue Wegman

If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day. ~W. Beran Wolfe

The best way for a person to have happy thoughts is to count his blessings and not his cash. ~Author Unknown

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