Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time

by Brigid Schulte

To raise “gritty,” happy kids, Carter teaches parents to first lose the self-sacrifice. Depressed parents have been linked to negative behaviors in their kids, she says, while positive emotions tend to be contagious.15 So it’s important that parents start by taking care of themselves and their marriages or partnerships. She advises families to become more mindful of how they spend their time and how they talk to one another, to build support networks, create easy routines, meaningful rituals, and savor the small moments of connection. And most important, teach them gratitude. “Teach your kids to count their blessings,” Carter says. Adults who often feel grateful are more generous, more empathetic, and “have more energy, more optimism, more social connections and more happiness than those who do not,” wrote Melinda Beck in The Wall Street Journal, reporting on a decade of gratitude research. “They are also less likely to be depressed, envious, greedy or alcoholics. They earn more money, sleep more soundly, exercise more regularly and have greater resistance to viral infections.”16 And, Beck writes, researchers are beginning to find the same benefits in children. “Kids who feel and act grateful tend to be less materialistic, get better grades, set higher goals, complain of fewer headaches and stomach aches and feel more satisfied with their friends, families and schools than those who don’t.”