Cultivating Contentment

Being a parent forces you to confront what character traits you value most.

Hot on the heels of that thought comes the realisation of just how hard it is to actually inculcate these values - and hot on the heels of that comes the awareness of all the ways in which you yourself, as an adult, fail to live up to the practices you’ve just decided are the healthy and wholesome ways to live.¹

So what are those traits?² Well, academic ability and perseverance (or ‘grit’) may be amongst the most important for success, and social skills for making friends and forming relationships.³ But in terms of happiness, contentment may be at the top - for however much we have, or achieve, without contentment, we can always want more.

One of the earliest things we banned with Eldest was watching those awful videos of children unwrapping toys on YouTube. At the age of 3 or 4 he’d watched some at a friend’s house - and I vividly remember the following conversation, in which I told him that these videos were made by bad people,⁴ who were trying to make other people unhappy so that they could make money - and that no good could come of watching them, except discontentment and misery. The message went home and they’ve remained verboten for our family ever since.