The more you optimize for happiness in childhood, the more you actually wire for anxiety in adulthood. Dr. Becky Kennedy is right. Every time we rush to fix a kid’s upset, new toy, new plan, new distraction, we teach them hard feelings are emergencies that must end immediately. By adulthood the nervous system only knows two settings: full-on distress or full-off. No dimmer switch left. That gap turns ordinary disappointment into panic. The feeling itself becomes the threat because it was never allowed to stay long enough to become familiar. I want kids to know the dark is survivable, that they don’t have to scramble for the light the second it appears. That’s how the resilience muscle actually grows.