When we think about happiness, we usually think of something extraordinary--and those pinnacles of sheer delight--and those pinnacles seem to get rarer the older we get. For a child, happiness has a magical quality. I remember making hide-outs in newly cut hay, playing cops and robbers in the woods, getting a speaking part in the school play. Of course, kids also experience lows, but their delight at such peaks of pleasure as winning a race or getting a new bike is unreserved. In the teen-age years the concept of happiness changes. Suddenly it's conditional on such things as excitement, love, popularity and whether that zit will clear up before prom night, I can still feel the agony of not being invited to a party that almost everyone else was going to. In adulthood the things that bring profound joy--birth, love, marriage--also bring responsibility and the risk of loss. Lover may not last, sex isn't always good, loved ones die. For adults, happiness is complicated. Psychologists tell us that to be happy we need a blend of enjoyable leisure time and satisfying work. I doubt that my great-grandmother, who raised 14 children and took in washing, had much of either. She did have a network of close friends and family, and maybe this is what fulfilled her. If she was happy with what she had, perhaps it was because she didn't expect life to be very different. We, on the other hand, with so many choices and such pressure to succeed in every area, have turned happiness into one more thing we 'gotta have.' We're so self-conscious about our 'right' to it that it's making us miserable. So we chase it and equate it with wealth and success, without noticing that the people who have those things aren't necessarily happier. While happiness may be more complex for us, the solution is the same as ever. Happiness isn't about what happens to us--it's about how we perceive what happens to us. It's the knack of finding a positive for every negative, and viewing a setback as a challenge. It's not wishing for what we don't have, but enjoying what we do possess. According to the passage, which of the following statements about children is NOT true?