Parents teach children to lose gracefully, recover from mistakes and keep going when things get difficult. But there is another skill that rarely appears on the parenting checklist: learning to enjoy when things go right.
Research highlighted by the University of Notre Dame on October 8 raises the possibility that the way adults respond to very young children is connected to how those children experience rewarding moments well into adolescence. The finding offers a different way to think about emotional development: perhaps happiness is not just something we feel, but something our early relationships help us recognize.
Led by Notre Dame psychologist Kaylin Hill, the research followed 465 children and their parents over 15 years. Researchers observed parent-child interactions when the children were 3, noting behaviors such as warmth, encouragement and support as well as harsher or more intrusive responses. They later measured the children’s brain responses at ages 9, 12, 15 and 18.
The measurement was specific. Participants played a guessing game with monetary wins and losses while electroencephalography, or EEG, recorded electrical activity in the brain. Children who experienced more positive and less negative parenting at age 3 tended to show stronger neural responses to rewards across adolescence.
That does not mean researchers measured happiness directly, or proved that encouraging a preschooler causes a happier teenager. The study was observational. Its central result is an association between early parenting behavior and later reward processing, a brain response relevant to pleasure and motivation.
Still, the distinction is compelling. Parents routinely emphasize resilience: how to manage setbacks, navigate frustration and endure disappointment. These findings invite another question. Are we also helping children notice success, accept praise and take pleasure in the everyday things that go well?
The researchers say reward processing matters because reduced sensitivity to positive experiences has been linked to vulnerability to depression. Hill sees the findings as a clue for future research and family-focused interventions, not as a simple formula for preventing mental illness. Genetics, life events and many other influences also shape mental health.
The study, published July 21 in Communications Psychology, also comes with a reassuringly ordinary implication: positive parenting need not mean creating a perfect childhood. The behaviors researchers observed were familiar ones, showing warmth, offering encouragement and supporting a young child during an interaction.
We often ask whether children are prepared for the difficult moments life will bring. This research suggests a second question may deserve equal attention: when something good happens, have we helped them learn to enjoy it?
Reporting notes & sources
University of Notre Dame, October 8, 2026: https://news.nd.edu/news/study-finds-positive-parenting-teaches-children-how-to-experience-joyand-could-lead-to-better-mental-health/
Hill et al., “Early parenting is associated with the development of neural reward responsiveness from childhood through adolescence,” Communications Psychology, July 21, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s44271-026-00507-7
Study setting: Stony Brook University, New York; longitudinal observational research. EEG reward response is not equivalent to a direct measure of lifelong happiness.
University of Notre Dame, October 8, 2026: https://news.nd.edu/news/study-finds-positive-parenting-teaches-children-how-to-experience-joyand-could-lead-to-better-mental-health/