What are the childhood roots of adult happiness? What can parents do to help shape their children to create and sustain joy throughout their lives? Dr. Edward M. Hallowell maintains that five steps – connection, play, practice, mastery, and recognition – provide the basis for raising children who grow up to be happy adults.

In brief, the five steps work out in the following manner:

1. Connection: A secure environment of acceptance and trust provides a healthy context in which genuine play may occur.
2. Play: In and through play children learn to imagine, create, cooperate, and even fail.
3. Practice: When play becomes a passion children are internally motivated to discipline themselves for greater enjoyment.
4. Mastery: Persistent discipline leads to mastery resulting in confidence and self-esteem.
5. Recognition: When others recognize a child’s mastery, the child gains a sense of identity and experiences feelings of accomplishment. The cycle is repeated as the child’s new identity creates further connections and contexts in which genuine play may occur.

Step 1: Connection

The first step in nurturing childhood roots of adult happiness is creating “a connected atmosphere in which the child feels cared for, welcomed, and treated fairly” (79). The child should know that he or she is loved unconditionally: “A child should not have to work to win love” (93).

A commitment to unconditional love “does not mean that you say yes to everything or that you spoil your children. Far from it. Loving parents must set limits and deny requests all the time. But they never deny their love” (93-94). The presence of conflict is not a sign of an unhealthy environment. Families that experience true connectedness will certainly experience conflict: “conflict is a sign of connectedness… the opposite of connectedness is not conflict but indifference” (22).

A connected atmosphere is not optional. It is the necessary foundation for all subsequent steps. If such an atmosphere is not created, children will seek connections elsewhere. “Their lack of connectedness at home… leads them to find connectedness and expectations, however self-destructive, away from home” (88).

A connected environment provides the context for authentic play. “The child who feels closely connected and unconditionally loved develops a feeling of basic trust and security, which naturally leads to a feeling that it is safe to try new things” (140-141). It is a parent’s responsibility (and joy) to help a child discover what he loves and then encourage him to do it. Parents should regularly introduce their children to new activities. By doing this, they plant seeds of future happiness. “Each activity a child takes up is a seed that might just grow up into a lifelong pleasure or passion” (164).

Step 2: Play

Play stimulates a child’s imagination, creativity, and cooperation with others. On the surface, play might not seem like a strong foundation upon which to build a future, but the mental, emotional, and relational strengths it builds have lifelong significance. “The toys will change, the games will change, but the mental activity of creative, imaginative play… learned from ages zero to six will only grow” (111).

After a child puts away her teddy bears and blocks and dolls, she will find other toys and other games. For instance, she will start to play with words and become an author. Or she will start to play with numbers and become a mathematician. Or she will start to play with chemicals and become a chemist. Or she will start to play with baseballs and become an athlete. Or she will start to play with people and become a leader. Or she will start to play with ideas and become a philosopher. Or she will start to play with emotions and become an actor or an artist or a therapist or a coach or a teacher. Or she will start to play with dress-up clothes and become a fashion designer or with puzzles and become an architect. Whatever the field of interest, if play leads her into it, she will love it and excel. (106)

Play may seem loose and chaotic, but it is actually the beginning of serious discipline. In other words, play is not without its rules: “But play can be quite structured and governed by rules. For example, when you play the piano, you follow a score. The room for invention and change comes in your interpretation of the score. Or when you play baseball, you follow an elaborate set of rules. The room for spontaneous invention and change comes in how you swing or how you field a ball” (104).

In play, children learn how to have fun in a particular activity. They also learn how to fail. Play allows for mistakes. And mistakes make learning possible. The ability to learn in and through mistakes, nurtured by healthy play, will stay with a child throughout her entire life:

Fear of making mistakes is what keeps people from reaching their potential… Make sure you do not slip into using ridicule as a way of “motivating” your child. Once a child feels that making a mistake only leads to being made fun of, then that child will put all his efforts into never making mistakes. Without mistakes, learning stops. (206)

Step 3: Practice

When a child finds particular pleasure in an area of play, he or she can be motivated to enjoy greater measures of enjoyment through practice and discipline. The internal motivation to discipline arises from the passion the child has developed.

Because discipline does not come easy and usually involves real sacrifice, pain, and commitment, it is often viewed negatively. However, when our passion for something is so great that we believe the discipline is worth the pain, we readily give ourselves over to it. Thus, the key to nurturing discipline is to seek to do so in an activity that we love. “Discipline that lasts usually begins in the love of an activity and the desire to get better at it or at least to do it again” (126). Again: “The key to becoming disciplined is believing that it will be worth the pain” (132).

Ultimately, practice and discipline are the essential link between casual play and real mastery. “You can feel enthusiastic about encouraging practice and discipline if you understand and believe one basic fact: practice and disciple build the bridge between play and mastery” (125).

Step 4: Mastery

Persistent discipline leads to mastery. Mastery results in increased confidence and self-esteem. In addition, mastery of an activity lays the ground for further enjoyment and happiness in the future.

We think we can create high self-esteem simply by telling a child that he or she is good. It doesn’t work.

While praising children is a fine thing to do – it bolsters a sense of connectedness – studies show that it does not by itself create lasting self-esteem. Self-esteem is usually the result of mastery. After you master a difficult task, your self-esteem naturally rises, just as a muscle naturally gains bulk when it lifts heavy weights. (70)

Mastery must be distinguished from achievement. Mastery holds the possibility for greater measures of happiness and enjoyment. An emphasis on achievement alone does not necessarily do the same. “If you overemphasize the importance of the achievements rather than the process of getting there, you run a serious risk of turning your child into a kind of achievement junkie who has not true enthusiasm for anything except more achievement. That is not a recipe for a meaningful life” (76-77).

Hallowell strongly argues that achievements – no matter how great – do not necessarily lead to happiness. “Achievement is a benchmark, while mastery is a feeling…. Achievement without the feeling of mastery is thin gruel; it offers little sustenance” (144). For example,

Some children and adults ring up achievements without gaining the feeling of mastery because they short-circuit their way to the achievement. For example, if you take an easy course in college for the sole purpose of getting an A, you will not feel much mastery, although you may ring up the achievement of a high grade to put on your record. Or if you simply do the minimum amount required to complete your science project, you will not feel much mastery, although you will have achieved the goal of completing the project.

But the problem can grow more insidious than that. Some people do not feel mastery even when they achieve something extremely difficult. This is because their capacity to feel mastery has been blocked by excessive criticism and excessively high expectations. (137)

In contrast to achievement-focused parenting, Hallowell urges parents to let their children have a childhood by refusing to prematurely place them in the achievement fast lane. “We can demand high achievement now – victories and awards in sports, top grades in school, or high-status activities that look good on a resume regardless of whether the child has an interest in or aptitude for them – believing that high achievement now is the best guarantee for a successful life” (120).

Maintaining a proper balance is difficult. The way we frame our expectations can be encouraging or destructive: “‘Do your best’ is advice that instills a good kind of pressure. ‘Please me,’ on the other hand, is a request that can haunt a child forever, instilling toxic pressure” (39). Hallowell invites us to walk the fine line between selfish or unrealistic expectations of high achievement and indifference:

However, it is also dangerous not to encourage achievement. I do recommend that you have high expectations for your children. Just not too high. And do not tie your love for your child to your child’s meeting those expectations…

At the opposite extreme from the danger of driving your children too hard is the danger of not expecting enough from them. It is a form of disconnection, called indifference. (87)

Step 5: Recognition

When others recognize a child’s mastery in an activity, the child gains a sense of identity and experiences feelings of accomplishment. Feeling valued by others, especially by peers, brings happiness and stimulates broader connections with others, creating the opportunity for another five-step cycle.

Further growth can be stifled at this point by a need for toxic recognition. This occurs when people use their “recognition not to connect with the larger group but to separate from it, to rise above it. They crave praise and recognition not as a means of connecting but as a means of proving they are better than others, a means of disconnecting from them” (148).

Conclusion

Hallowell’s five steps provide a helpful model to aid parents in laying the foundations for the childhood roots of adult happiness. The steps encourage parents to focus less on providing happiness for their children and more on helping their children learn to create and sustain joy on their own. By inviting children to pursue their positive passions parents provide “both roots and wings” (100) – roots of adult happiness and wings to fly to greater heights of joy and delight.

© Richard J. Vincent, 2005