Helping children create meaningful lives

Learn about: Helping children create meaningful lives from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, PhD,...
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Helping children create meaningful lives

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The importance is in the fact that teenagers are exposed suddenly to enormous variety of options in life from the option of drugs to stealing cars or going for joy rides. All of this is a possibility that a normal teenager would consider because conciousness is able to imagine everything. It is not bound by genetic or any other social controls, so the control has to come from the inside. We have to learn. We have to make teenagers want to have the things that are good for them and good for society in the long run. So we have to direct their conscience, enable them to direct their conscience so that they will make choices that are positive. Part of this consists in exposing them to activities that are good for them and getting them to experience flow by doing things that are useful for the future, theirs and others. If they don´t learn something that is enjoyable and useful at the same time, they will have to find enjoyable things outside their job, their family. And what is useful and what is enjoyable will be separated instead of being conjoined. And for the rest of their lives, they will be going from meaningless leisure to joyless work. And that is not a good recipe for life.
ALL PARENTS, Parenting

Learn about: Helping children create meaningful lives from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, PhD,...

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, PhD

Psychologist & Researcher

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was born in Italy of Hungarian parents. He came to the United States at age 22, became a psychologist, taught at the University of Chicago for 30 years and was Chairman of the Department of Psychology. Since 1999 he has been a Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University in Southern California. Of the 13 books he wrote or co-authored, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience is the best known; it has been translated in 29 languages. He and his wife Isabella spend the summers in Montana, where the rest of the family comes to visit and hike in the mountains.

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