"There is ample evidence to suggest that how parents interact with a child will have a lasting effect on the kind of person that child grows up to be. In one of our studies conducted at the University of Chicago, for example, Kevin Rathunde observed that teenagers who had certain types of relationship with their parents were significantly more happy, satisfied, and strong in most life situations than their peers who did not have such a reationship. The family context promoting optimal experience could be described as having five characteristics. The first one is clarity: the teenagers feel that they know what their parents expect from them -goals and feedback in the family interaction are unambiguous. The second is centering, or the children's perception that their parents are interested in what they are doing in the present, in their concrete feelings and experiences, rather than being preoccupied with whether they will be getting into a good college or obtaining a well-paid job. Next is issue of choice: children feel that they have a variety of possibilities from which to choose, including that of breaking parental rules- as long as they are prepared to face the consequences. The fourth differentiating characteristic is commitment, or the trust that allows the child to feel comfortable enough to set aside the shield of his defenses, and become unselfconsciously involved in whatever he is interested in. And finally there is challenge, or the parents' dedication to provide increasingly complex opportunities for action to their children.
The presence of these five conditions made possible what was called the "autotelic family context," because they provide an ideal training for enjoying life. The five characteristics clearly parallel the dimensions of the flow experience. Children who grow up in family situations that facilitate clarity of goals, feedback, feeling of control, concentration on the task at hand, intrinsic motivation, and challenge will generally have a better chance to order their lives so as to make flow possible."
"There are two words whose meanings reflect our somewhat warped attitudes toward levels of commitment to physical or mental activities. These are the terms amateur and dilettante. Nowadays these labels are slightly derogatory. An amateur or a dilettante is someone not quite up to par, [...] one whose performance falls short of professional standards. But originally, "amateur" [...] referred to a person who loved what he was doing. Similarly a "dilettante" [...] was someone who enjoyed a given activity. The earliest meanings of these words therefore drew attention to experience rather than accomplishments; they described the subjective rewards individuals gained from doing things, instead of focusing on how well they were achieving. [...] increasingly the emphasis has been to value behavior over subjective states; what is admired is success, achievement, the quality of performance rather than the quality of experience. Consequently it has become embarrassing to be called a dilettante, even though to be a dilettante is to achieve what counts most -the enjoyment one's actions provide."
