Will positive psychology and gratitude intervention teach our kids how to be happy?

Kathy Seligman:

Three good things, possibly more, happened to 6-year-old Fiona McLaughlin one fall day, and at dinner that night she took a deep breath and recounted them. The first was "right now," which often tops her list. Then there was going to school and making a color wheel there in the morning.

Her younger sister, Molly, who is 4, went next. "When you cuddle with me at night," she said, looking at her mother. "Right now and having homework."

It's not that bad things failed to happen. They did. Fiona's favorite friend was sick and didn't go to school. Molly, who actually didn't have homework but was attempting to do her sister's, said no one wanted to play with her when she got to school. But each night at their suburban Piedmont home, the girls are asked to stop and recall positive aspects of the day. The scene at dinner did not just fall into place. All of it - the well-set table, cloth napkins, candlelight, pointed questions about the best parts of the day - is a ritual rooted in the growing field of positive psychology, the scientific study of well-being. Kids tumble into the world with their own set of inherited traits and tendencies, researchers in the field say, but positive emotions can be nurtured.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at January 1, 2008 12:00 AM
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