I was chatting with someone who lamented sadly to me one day, “I asked my son to rate his happiness on a scale of 1 to 10, and he said 4. Reasons were – always getting scolded, coping with school is so hard… And I just felt that childhood should not be one big, long struggle all the time… so many hours a day.” Does this sound like your child too?
Let’s take the ‘happiness scale’ one step further. My suggestion to her is this – take a ‘happiness scale’ rating every few days, or even every day. The next time he gives a low rating of 4 again, ask him one question, “What is the one thing we can do right now to increase it to 5?” Not to increase it to 8, 9, or 10, since that might cause him to be very excited and ask for the moon! But to increase by 1 on the scale.
There are two aims for this. Firstly, to see that it does not take much to make yourself feel a little better. Secondly, to see that while you do not have control over the external environment or other people (e.g. make them scold you less), you can still do something for yourself.