My Child is Just Not Happy

My child is just not happy. I don't know why, and I don't know if they know why. Any advice? Uh, I'd love to know the age on this child. Um, and I would like to know, again, if, if there's no reference there, that's okay, but the observation and my child is not happy. Are there settings where the child is happy with friends, with peers? Uh, is the child, is your child happy in any context that you can think of? So first of all, we wanna look at both sides of this equation. Are there times where they seem to be happier? And again, I just wanna put that out there. Are there times, if not, then it's possible that there is some event or events that have occurred to your child that may be triggering the kind of sadness or lack of happiness that you're experiencing. The other part of it is sometimes people aren't sad, they're just not happy. So they're just here in the middle. A few years ago I was, uh, interviewing, his name was Dr. Al Seabert. He was one of the top, uh, researchers on resiliency, and he was interviewing, uh, a family, and they said, our daughter's just really depressed. And so he went and talked with the daughter. And what was interesting is she had symptoms of depression, but she also had moments where she was really happy, she was excited, and she had friends and she was, and, and, and so the parents, they were actually uncomfortable with her child having depressive emotions, dere. And, and, and again, if depression sustained, it doesn't lift for weeks at a time, clearly my child's depressed. And we probably ought to consider taking them to a doctor and doing some evaluation to see if there's something either hormonally going on or if they've had life experiences that we may or may not be aware of. So, uh, depression can come in a myriad of things, but let's talk about the counter to that. How do we help our child find joy? And, and I wanna emphasize this joy, interestingly enough, it, I'll give you really something simple to do today. I'd like you to everybody to think about something that you're grateful for, something that brings you joy, something that is positive in your life. And I'd like you to write it down. And if you write down what you're grateful for and why you're grateful for that, that in of itself can increase our happiness. The other thing that we can do to increase, now I'm not talking about sadness. I'm talking about things that we can do to counter it, to create joy. Smells. Think of a certain element that you just really like or think about. Uh, scenery being out in nature is an antidepressants, going for a bike ride or going to the pool and swimming, uh, in the summer. These are all great things that we can do to combat depression. So it really, really important ideas here is not just focus on the sadness, but create things through our senses that bring us joy. Again, just an example, being in nature. Exercise, doing hard things. Interestingly enough, being grateful and what, writing down what you're grateful and why. So do it as a family. And then the other part I would say is really focus on a deeper connection with your child. Uh, get to know their concerns. If they'll open up to you and if they don't know, that's okay, let's just sit down with them and let's work with them to help them talk through things. Or we could do it in another way. We could even write, have them write down some of the things that they're feeling and then have them share it with you. Anyway, these are just a few ideas that I would use to combat that.