Happiness is not a goal for your adult children
No one has full happiness and in the case of young people this happiness cannot become a goal.
Children live in authentic and full happiness every day, worse when they grow up it seems that happiness instead of a path becomes a goal … and here all the problems begin. Young children begin to realize that life demands many things of them and they look forward to when they had no worries … but it is not good to focus on those feelings . They may have forgotten that it is a confusing time of self-discovery and risk-taking.
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WHY CAN’T HAPPINESS BE A GOAL?
Happiness is easy to achieve if a person simply chooses not to worry too much about things … to let things flow. But young adults are concerned and rightly so. They are adjusting to their independence, trying to make new friends, and prosper academically. They have to choose a major and eventually find a job. Instead of feeling happy and excited, they can feel overwhelmed and stressed all the time.
Today’s parents tend to overemphasize “happiness” without helping their children understand what it means to be happy. Before the 60s and 70s, no one said that happiness was a top priority. Instead, parents would say that what they wanted for their young adult children was independence, financial security, a job they enjoy, and a good family .
Nowadays, if you ask a father what he wants for his children, the most common is that they answer that they want them to be happy. But what does it mean to be happy? Nobody is happy all the time. Happiness comes and goes. To understand happiness, sometimes you have to be unhappy and experience disappointment. This is how you teach resilience. You learn that you may be unhappy or disappointed but that in time you will become happy again.
COMPARATIVE HAPPINESS
Social media adds another layer of pressure on young adults. They see their friends posting incredible photos and narratives about their experience and their daily experiences. Young adults can compare their lives with their peers and think, “Everyone else is having a lot more fun than I am, ” “Their lives are so much more interesting than mine.” Social media has created new opportunities for young adults to compare their lives with other people’s. Not only do they know where everyone is going, they see it in the photos and know immediately if they have not been included … something that can also make them feel bad.
The impact of social media on young adults can be distracting, depressing, and anxiety-provoking. Some young adults may prefer to stay in their pajamas in their dorm room rather than go to parties and get involved in stressful social interactions … and that’s okay, too.
PARENTS’ CONCERN FOR THEIR YOUNG CHILDREN
Parents may worry too much about their young adult children because they want them to have a good life. Although being all the time worried about the children is exhausting and is not beneficial for either the parents or the children.
It is important for parents to separate their own happiness from the happiness of their children. Young adults need the opportunity to live their own lives, find their own paths, and work through their own struggles.
HELPING YOUNG ADULTS ADJUST
Parents can’t help but want their child to be happy, and conversely, they feel terrible if they think their child is suffering. But just because a young adult is going through a difficult time or is unhappy with their present experience, it doesn’t mean they are suffering. The opposite of happiness is misery or despair, not disappointment.
Parents need to give their children a chance to calm down and solve problems on their own rather than jumping in to fix things, because this will not help them at all. Always keep communication open with your children and help them think about solutions instead of problems. Remind them that it is okay to be sad or frustrated at times, even angry. remind them that what they see on social media is not the reality of what happens … we all have sad moments in life.
Dr. Tabriella Perivolaris, Sara's mother and fan of fashion, beauty, motherhood, among others, about the female universe. Since 2018 she has been working as a copywriter, always bringing to her articles a little of her experience and experience as a mother and woman.