I don't have children of my own, but I love spending time with my nephews and nieces. I'm not sure that I teach them as much about happiness as they teach me. Spending time around them lets me see things for the first time all over again through their eyes. Because the littlest ones haven't learned how to hide how they feel yet, every feeling is expressed in pure form on their faces. I have a picture of one of my nephews from when he was on a carousel for the first time. He has his head thrown back and a huge, open smile on his face. I keep it on my dresser mirror so I can see it every day.
More recently, holding my sister's baby when he was just a few hours old was an incredible joy. I was so relieved that he and his mom were fine that I didn't have room for anything but happiness in my heart.
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I have read that you can teach your kids optimism. Here is one article that talks about it, but you can find a lot by googling "teach kids optimism".
ReplyDeletehttp://ezinearticles.com/?Teach-Children-The-Skills-Of-Optimism&id=9078
Practice don't preach! You have to live it yourself in order to teach it :-)
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