Edward M. Hallowell - The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness: Five Steps to Help Kids Create and Sustain Lifelong Joy

the childhood
roots of adult
happiness

FIVE STEPS TO HELP KIDS
CREATE AND SUSTAIN
LIFELONG JOY

EDWARD M. HALLOWELL, M.D.

BALLANTINE BOOKS NEW YORK

CONTENTS

In memory of Josselyn Hallowell Bliss

School is out. Its June, and the backyard beckons.

I always have high hopes for the summer.

Summer is like childhood. It passes too fast. But if youre lucky, it gives you warm memories from which you take strength in the cold days ahead.

Summer is also like childhood, in that you may not think what you are doing matters very much while you are doing it, but later on you realize it mattered far more than you knew.

Summer is hot days, picnics, roads under repair, and the chance to swim. Summer is slower than the rest of the year, and its days are longer than any others. Summer embraces children. But like childhood, summer also warns: Love me now; I will not last.

Like a child, summer teaches us about the best in life. Summer asks us to do what we should help our children do: play, relax, explore, and grow.

I dedicate this book to summer and to all the children who play beneath its sun.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I turned to many people for help with this book. I interviewed parents, teachers, school principals, college professors, pediatricians, psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, specialists in learning, and a host of others from disparate fields such as business, religion, martial arts, and sports. Without their help, I never could have written this book.

I also interviewed many children of all ages, and, of course, they were particularly helpful. They know so much about joy.

Many experts from the fields of psychology, learning, and medicine were especially helpful. Janine Bempechat, Robert Brooks, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William Doherty, Anna Fels, Howard Gardner, Peter Jensen, Jerome Kagan, Mindy Kornhaber, Peter Metz, Michael Thompson, Priscilla Vail, and George Vaillant all generously gave me their assistance. Anna Fels was particularly helpful in explaining to me her ideas about the formative nature of recognition.

Dozens of school principals and teachers guided me as well. I especially want to thank Peter Barrett, Kathy Brownback, Paula Carreiro, Barbara Chase, Martha Cutts, Dary Dunham, Dick Hall, Gwen Hooper, Frank Perrine, Randy Plummer, Bruce Shaw, Sally Smith, Bruce Stewart, Marjo Talbot, Ty Tingley, and Aggie Underwood.

I informally interviewed so many other people that I think my friends grew weary of hearing me ask each new person I met, Do you mind if I ask, what do you consider to be the childhood roots of adult happiness? Once a person understood the question, he or she almost invariably got interested, gave careful thought, and offered a reply. The most common reply? Well, I cant give it away right here, but you will know by the time you finish reading this book.

However, the book is entirely my responsibility. Whatever flaws it has are my doing.

My oh-so-wise editor at Ballantine, Nancy Miller, and her marvelous assistant, Megan Casey, helped me with superb editorial suggestions. They improved this book immensely.

And my trusty agent for so many years, Jill Kneerim, blessings upon you. You are always there, and you have given me the agents equivalent of unconditional love. I can never thank you enough.

Finally, I thank my children, Lucy, Jack, and Tucker, and their mother, my wife, Sue. The day I married Sue my life forever changed for the better. I know she would agree with me when I say that our three children have surprised us with more joy than we ever imagined we would find. I wrote this book because of Sue and because of Lucy and Jack and Tucker. My children created such an intense feeling in me of I must find out what is best for them while there is still time to try to provide it that I researched and wrote this book. I see their faces now in my imagination as I write these words, and I hope that someday, when they are grown-ups, they will read what I am writing now and smile, saying to themselves, Yes, Dad, it worked. Were happy.

WHATS IN THIS BOOK?

What does this have to say? I always ask when I pick up a book as I browse through a bookstore (one of my favorite pastimesI always come out with more books than I will actually read). Like most people these days, Im too busy to read many books all the way through. So Ill ask a friend, What does that new book by So-and-so have to say? and he or she will reply with a few pithy sentences that will allow me to file that book under Done. Or Ill read a portion of a review, or Ill catch part of an interview with the author on Charlie Rose or Oprah, or Ill read an excerpt in some magazine, or Ill even buy the book and look at its cover now and then. Maybe one day Ill actually read ten pages of it. After a while I will have absorbed the book and believe I know what is in it. Unfortunately this is how many of us adults try to keep up in this era of information overload.

So whats in this book?

As the author, I would be most pleased if youd actually read it to find out. I did my best not to waste pages. This book could easily have been ten times longer than it is.

But I sympathize with your desire to hear the short version first, or what businesspeople call the the elevator pitch, in which you have only as much time as an average elevator ride to make your case.

OK, heres mine:

This book is about the roots of joy. I present specific steps you can take to increase the chances of a childs finding happiness and fulfillment in childhood that will deepen and grow in adulthood.

Based on current research, as well as my own experiences as a parent, teacher, and child psychiatrist, these pages usher you into the often-thought-about but rarely mapped world of happiness-in-the-making.

Its best not to leave happiness to chance alone. Parents, teachers, and all others who care about children should have a plan for creating a childhood that leads to lifelong joy.

Childhood lasts only about fifteen short, spellbound years. But what a lifelong spell those years do cast. How to cast it well?

I have evolved a five-step plan that parents and others can use to raise children who will stand the best chance of becoming happy, responsible adults. This book describes the plan in detail, cites the research on which it is based, and provides suggestions for how to implement it in daily life.

My plan is based on values that most people share. It is neither liberal nor conservative. It is based on the love of children and the power of childhood. We know what needs to be done. Now lets do it.

If we do itif we restore childhood to the way it ought to bewe will not only serve our children, we will strengthen ourselves.

This book also celebrates what children give to us grown-ups, if we let them, and all that we can learn from children about how to be happier in our adult lives. Children really are our best experts on happiness.