Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

Dr. Kennedy suggests that when parents talk about wanting their children to be happy, they often mean avoiding pain and distress. However, teaching children how to deal with these emotions, rather than avoid them, will impact how they view themselves and challenges they encounter. Thus, resilience is more important than happiness, as “cultivating happiness is dependent on regulating distress” (62).

Dr. Kennedy uses an analogy of the body as a jar that contains a range of emotions, each of which takes up a different amount of space at different times. The wider the range of emotions one learns to regulate, the more space there is to cultivate happiness, as one learns to cushion negative feelings to keep them from taking up too much space. Resilience is the ability to experience a wide range of emotions and still remain grounded.

Resilient people are better able to deal with stress, as they learn to tolerate distress and stick with challenges even without assurance of impending success. What helps children build resilience is empathy from the parent, acceptance of who they are, and the space to make mistakes, among other things. By encouraging children to take responsibility for their actions and develop problem-solving skills, parents help children tolerate distress rather than avoid it.