1KHO 878: Trying to Be Happy Is Making Kids Miserable | Jonathan Eckert, The Happiness Crisis

**Ginny Yurich** (0:00)
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Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and we are going to be talking about a topic. I think that it's a topic that you're constantly thinking about as a parent, which is happiness. Are my kids happy? Are they going to be happy? John Eckert, who wrote a brand new book, it's out now called The Happiness Crisis, How Adversity Can Build a Resilient and Joyful Next Generation is here. John, welcome and huge congrats.

**Jonathan Eckert** (1:27)
Hey, thank you. Thanks for having me. Thanks for all you do.

**Ginny Yurich** (1:30)
What a book to have out into the world. You have got so much experience working with young adults. So let's kick it off with this. You direct the Baylor Center for School Leadership. What are you seeing across the board as it relates to young adults?

**Jonathan Eckert** (1:45)
Well, I always say I have the best job in education. I literally go around the world, find educators doing good work, connect them with each other, write about them and talk about them. And there are so many good things going on in schools, but I think one of the biggest challenges educators and parents have right now is the way kids are defining happiness, because I think it is leading to a lot of unhappiness. I actually have a section where I was like, hey, trying to be happy, I think is making our kids miserable. And so that's an obstacle that parents and educators are facing, and it's all around the world.
So we work with leaders in all 50 states and over 50 countries, and the narrative is different based on the context, but the reality is kids believe if they're struggling, they're not well, and if they're struggling, they can't be happy. And that's a huge problem for teachers, coaches, and parents, because learning is productive struggle. And if you are not willing to embrace that, then you're not going to get to real joy, because oftentimes the depth of the struggle will determine the peak of our joy. And so we need to invite kids in to a better way of living, and that means we're going to have to redefine what happiness is and really push them more toward joy.

**Ginny Yurich** (2:58)
So you have a lot in the book about struggle. You talk about the overlooked value of struggle quite a bit. It comes up a lot throughout the book. You have this phrase in here called the trailing parent.

**Jonathan Eckert** (3:10)
Yeah.

**Ginny Yurich** (3:11)
I had not actually heard that phrase before.

**Jonathan Eckert** (3:14)
Yeah, that was new to me. That was an Atlantic article that came out last year, and they used to talk about helicopter parents. I have a section on lawnmower parents. I think we've moved from just helicoptering to mowing down anything in our kids' way. Out of love, like we want the best for them, and we think we're doing that and we just remove obstacles. It's not true. This trailing parent thing, this was new to me too. I guess for some college students, some parents are following the kid to college. So whatever university town they're in, the family is buying like an apartment or a condo in the town, just in case the kid needs them. And then even, the two craziest things, one parent was describing how the kid was going overseas for a study abroad trip, which is to open up the world of possibilities and put you into a new context and see how you can figure that out. Like, oh, just follow them over to Rome or to Switzerland or wherever they're going, and just in case my kid needs me, which as a parent, I'm like, yeah, I'm all for a nice, fun summer trip.