Last week I posted an article from the Huffington Post entitled “11 Questions That Will Make Your Child Happier<\/a>” by Samantha Rodman, PhD, of DrPsychMom.com<\/a>, on the Mom Factually Facebook page<\/a>.\u00a0 The idea is to ask your children about things that will help them focus on the positive. Such an outlook generally makes people happier, and the idea is to repeatedly querry your children so that eventually they start focusing on the positive on their own.<\/p>\n

This all sounds well and good on paper. Easy, even.<\/a><\/p>\n

Trying to be who practices what I preach\/post online, I decided to ask the questions. That night as I was tucking my daughter into bed, I asked her question number one: “What was your favorite part of today?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

She looked thoughtful for a few seconds and I could almost hear the wheels turning as she fast-forwarded through her day. The dramatic pause made me think she had so many options from which to pick that it was a tough question. I thought about how happy she had seemed when I picked her up from dance class because the teacher had praised her, and then I thought about the fun family dinner we had enjoyed. I wondered if she would pick one of those, or something good from school that would give me a peek inside her world there.<\/p>\n

I was certain she was going to share something truly wonderful with me. Then she opened her mouth.<\/p>\n

“In supervised study, I really had to go to the bathroom, but someone else had the pass. And they were gone for a really long time. But they finally came back and I finally got to go to the bathroom and I was really happy that I didn’t have to hold it any more.”<\/p>\n

Huh. Really? That’s<\/em> your highlight? Your favorite<\/em> part of the day? Well, at least she’s not focused on materials things as a source of happiness, I told myself. Weak, I know.<\/p>\n

I had forgotten the fact that you never really know what’s going to come out of your child’s mouth at any given time. I have to confess that I didn’t move on to questions 2 through 11. I decided to cut my losses and call it a night.<\/p>\n

I’m thinking I may try that Q & A with my child again tonight, but with far lower expectations than I had last week.<\/p>\n

Prior post: <\/strong>Listen To Your Mother wants you and your stories<\/a><\/p>\n

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Last week I posted an article from the Huffington Post entitled “11 Questions That Will Make Your Child Happier” by Samantha Rodman, PhD, of DrPsychMom.com, on the Mom Factually Facebook page.\u00a0 The idea is to ask your children about things that will help them focus on the positive. Such an outlook generally makes people happier, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1240"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6130,"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions\/6130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betweenusparents.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}