I've been thinking a lot this past week about the dilemmas of childhood hierarchies and brand name idolization. What interests me about the problem is that not all kids play the hierarchy game, making fun of other kids in order to be part of an "in" crowd. So what's the difference? What makes the nice kids nice?

That's the real question we need to be asking--we'll never solve the problem by removing the things kids can be mean about. Kids who want to be mean are going to be mean. To make the mean behavior stop, we have to change the factors that are causing that behavior. Eliminating the focus of the behavior will just make the mean kids shift their focus to something else.

Here's a perfect example. Lots of schools have tried to address the problem of brand-based alienation by creating a dress code, presumably so that kids won't be able to make fun of other kids over their clothes. But dress codes don't help. Kids can tell the difference between Gap outfits and Sears outfits. And even kids who wear genuine school uniforms (all purchased from a single supplier) will still make fun of each other's shoes or hair or watch or whatever. Mean kids find stuff to be mean about. So what makes them mean in the first place?

I have a hunch (and it's just that--a hunch) that we'll find the answer in how happy kids are on a fundamental day-to-day basis. Happiness isn't an easy thing to measure, but in my experience, happy kids aren't mean. (In the wise words of Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blond, "Happy people don't kill their husbands. They just don't!")

Of course, this just begs the question, in a way. If happy kids are nice, then what makes kids happy? But I don't think this is rocket science. And I don't think that what makes kids fundamentally happy is brand name retail acquisition. I think the kids who are fundamentally happy are the kids who feel good about themselves. And that isn't such a tough equation to crack.

Kids need positive, engaged attention from parents and role models. They need praise, encouragement and support. They need to be reassured that their natural responses to the world around them, both physically and emotionally, are "normal" and appropriate. They need to be shown positive outlets for their more difficult emotions (sadness, anger, fear, disappointment).

It's interesting to me that primary and even secondary school curricula generally include nothing about emotional knowledge or skills. It's an unstated fact that children are expected to learn emotional skills at home. But not every home is good at teaching emotional skills, just like not every home is good at teaching physics. That's why we have school in the first place.

If kids could learn everything they needed to learn at home, we wouldn't waste our tax dollars on a public educational system. We send our kids to school so that they can learn the things they need to learn to succeed in life. But study after study has shown that emotional skills are at least as important as cognitive ability in predicting life "success" - and more important in predicting long-term happiness. Isn't it time we started paying attention?

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Posted by EM Sky, on Business, Life, and Society for the Whole Human Being