Director’s Blog: Teaching Happiness and Gratitude

Recently I read an interview that ACA Camping Magazine (January/February 2012, pp. 34-37) conducted with Dr. Christine Carter entitled, Teaching Happiness – Positive Emotions are Skills to be Learned. The premise of this very interesting article is that parents and educators (camps included) should be teaching children skills that promote positive emotions that lead to happy, healthy, more successful lives. Who doesn’t want that, right?

Yet, although we all may want to achieve happiness for ourselves and for our children, I think this article points out that in order to achieve this, we need to spend the time and invest the energy in actively talking about happiness and offering our children specific tools that will allow them to grow into happy, healthy individuals. In other words, it may not happen if we do not work proactively to make it happen. Carter contends that happiness precedes success because it breeds creativity, better perception, and better problem solving. Positive emotions not only help us fulfill our potential at school, home, and in the workplace, but can also effect our health. As Carter notes, “[I]t’s pretty widely acknowledged that anger is damaging to our cardiovascular and immune systems.”

I believe that Ranch Camp and parents, within their homes, need to make the commitment of creating environments that are filled with Hit-o’rerut, the value of gratitude, wonder, and awakening. We also need to provide our children with a safe environment in which they can take risks and sometimes fail (yes, I said fail), so that they are allowed to experience disappointment and discomfort. This is very difficult for many parents to do but Carter suggests that enabling children to experience these emotions in a safe environment enables children to gain resilience. Young people who are allowed to fail within a supportive, caring environment are better able tolerate and overcome stress and challenges, which in turn enables them to better handle challenges, failures, and disappointment that they might experience in their future life.

Together, we can create a strong, positive generation of children who are not afraid of challenging themselves and taking risks, of going outside of their comfort zones, and who are caring, compassionate individuals full of gratitude for the many blessings that surround them every day.

Ideas for creating Hit-o’rerut at home (adapted from article cited above):

• Sharing gratitude for one simple thing each day during your family meal
• Create a gratitude wall in your home with handwritten notes and artwork depicting things what family members are grateful for
• Go on a photography scavenger hunt around your home and neighborhood and have children take pictures of things they appreciate

In closing, to get the ball rolling, I would like to express gratitude for getting to live and work in a beautiful setting (Ranch Camp), being able to work with amazing people (my husband, Gilad and great friend, Gina), and serving hundreds of phenomenal families each summer (YOU).