What if you could actually teach your kids to be happier? According to Dr. Christine Carter, you can use specific strategies to help your kids cultivate happiness. "It's amazing to me that happiness is much better thought of as a skill or a set of skills than it is an innate predisposition or personality trait," says the mother of two and author of Raising Happiness. "We know beyond a shadow of a doubt what will best predict somebody's happiness."

Need a new approach for stopping conflict in your home, getting your kids to listen or teaching them gratitude? Dr. Carter shares some of her strategies:

• Create a conflict resolution area: Reserve a place in your house for calm discussions where everyone is invited to express their feelings and can gain some perspective on the conflict.

• Dance around: The next time your kids are cranky or start to fight, turn on happy music and see if it changes their mood. "We know that when you put happy music on ... you feel a little happier, because that part of your brain lights up," says Dr. Carter. "We call it dance party in my family when we just need a little bit of a lift; we put it on and I feel happy and we're all moving and having a great time!"

• Create a family feelings list: If your child does something that hurts your feelings or that you find offensive, such as calling you by your first name, sit with them and make a list of how it makes you feel so they are more aware of your emotions and the impact of their behavior.

• Practice gratitude: Donate one toy a week to charity and write thank you notes with your children regularly. "When we consciously practice gratitude, doing deliberate things - like every night at dinnertime writing things down that we feel grateful for, that becomes a habit and that habit will make us happier and a whole host of other great things."

• Foster your family's connections: "If we have learned anything in our 50 years of research on our happiness, it's that our social ties and connections to other people are our most important predictors of our happiness," Dr. Carter says. "So for parents, that means we have a big influence over our kids' social ties and their networks of people - that village. So what we need to do is focus on our village."