Brain Rules for Baby (Updated and Expanded)

If you want a well-educated child, you must create an environment of safety.

If you want your kids to be happy, you will spend lots of time teaching them how and when this filtering should occur.

Because kids often express their emotions indirectly, you need to consider the environmental context before you attempt to decode your child’s behavior.

Young children may not be aware of the emotions they are experiencing. They may not yet understand the socially correct way to communicate them. The result is that your little one may act out in anger when he is actually sad, or she may just become grumpy for no apparent reason. Sometimes a single event will induce a mixture of emotions. These emotions and their attendant feelings can feel so big and so out of control that the kids become frightened on top of it, which only amplifies the effect.

When we scan our world, we tag certain items for further processing and leave other items alone. Emotions are the tags. Another way to think of emotions is like Post-it notes that cause the brain to pay attention to something.

You’re probably used to thinking of emotions as the same thing as feelings, but to the brain, they’re not

Individuals who are thoughtful, kind, sensitive, outward focused, accommodating, and forgiving have deeper, more lasting friendships—and lower divorce rates—than people who are moody, impulsive, rude, self-centered, inflexible, and vindictive.

how to raise happy kids. You will need to teach your children how to socialize effectively—how to make friends, how to keep friends—if you want them to be happy.

Money increases happiness only when it lifts people out of poverty

In addition to satisfying relationships, other behaviors that predict happiness include:

• a steady dose of altruistic acts

• making lists of things for which you are grateful, which generates feelings of happiness in the short term

• cultivating a general “attitude of gratitude,” which generates feelings of happiness in the long term

• sharing novel experiences with a loved one

• deploying a ready “forgiveness reflex” when loved ones slight you