If you sometimes secretly fear you’re raising a mini moaner whose glass is always half-empty, help is at hand.
Pessimism and optimism have long been recognised as distinct personality traits, but new work in the field of positive psychology shows that parents can guide their children towards a healthier and more hopeful outlook.
Being a realistic optimist helps kids to stave off things like depression and promotes resilience and the ability to thrive in tough times.
Here are nine ways to support your child in thinking more positively:
1. Tune in
The starting point in gently changing pessimism in kids is to tune in carefully and figure out how they see the world. Listen out for the child’s way of explaining things (their explanatory style). Those with a more positive outlook will tend to talk about setbacks as temporary and out-of-the-ordinary. Children who are more pessimistic will blame themselves when things go wrong and tend to see problems as permanent and pervasive – e.g. ‘nobody likes me’, ‘I can’t do anything right’.
2. Mind your language
Have you ever had that heart-stopping moment where your child parrots back one of those throwaway remarks you use all the time? Quite the wake-up call, isn’t it? The fact is, our everyday conversation is littered with phrases we don’t even notice, but can make quite a big impact on little ears. Whenever we put ourselves down, blame ourselves or criticise ourselves (or our partners), we unconsciously set thought-patterns for children to follow. The advice of positive psychology is to be more aware of the language we use to explain life’s ups and downs. Instead of lapsing into a barrage of negativity – ‘everything always goes wrong for me, I’m jinxed’ – aim to be model a more accurate and optimistic message – ‘I must be really tired today, it’s not like me to make so many mistakes’.
3. Check for ‘personalisation’
It’s natural for children, particularly as they get older, to compare themselves to others. If they don’t feel they’re as clever, athletic or good looking as their peers, there can be a tendency to ‘personalise’ situations that are beyond their control. The antidote to this is to highlight the individual child’s own strengths and talents and to encourage them to focus on developing those. That doesn’t mean putting others down (another trap parents can fall into), but it does mean encouraging children to always see themselves as equal to others.
4. Watch for over-generalisation
Key words to listen out for here include ‘always’, ‘never’, ‘nobody’, ‘everyone’, ‘all’ and ‘always’. Chances are your child tends to over-generalise and believe that one negative incident is far more serious than it is. When your child tearfully tells you they ‘have no friends’, comfort them first and then gently discuss whether that’s really true. If it’s a situation where there’s been a falling out with friends, chat about things you can do – e.g. organising a play date – to smooth things over. If that’s not an option, consider whether you need to support the child’s social skills by joining a class or a club.
5. Accentuate the positive
The aim is to encourage realistic and flexible thinking skills in your child and to avoid any pessimistic tendency to see things in a purely negative light. Sometimes a child will tend to filter out all of the positives and speak only about the negative aspects of an experience (‘it rained all the time on holidays!’). If you notice this, take the opportunity to chat to your child about the things that were positive and that went well, but which they’ve overlooked. Smaller children might even enjoy time spent with you drawing or writing down these positive things, and it encourages a habit of more optimistic thinking.
6. Encourage self-compassion
The fact is that all of us – parents in particular – could do with cutting ourselves some slack. Junior pessimists tend to be very hard on themselves and that’s often something they’ve picked up, unconsciously, from mum and dad. If you find your child criticising themselves over a football performance or a spelling test, that’s your chance to chat to them about easing up a little. What would they say to someone else in the same position? Chances are they’d be a lot more compassionate and understanding.
7. Avoid ‘mind reading’
We can all fall into the trap of expecting other people to read our minds and to know how we’d like to be treated. The truth is that, as adults, we could all do with being a bit more assertive about what we want and need. Kids are no different. Sometimes a child will lapse into negative thinking (‘nobody likes me’) because they didn’t get the response they wanted from a friend. If a child comes to you saying this, chat through the other possible reasons for their friend’s behaviour – maybe they were having a bad day, maybe they didn’t understand that you wanted a turn on their bike… etc. Coach your child in being more clear and assertive and handling any of the normal squabbles that can arise between friends.
8. Separate feelings and behaviour
If a child tends to be pessimistic, it may be because they see their feelings as reality. Say, for example, the teacher starts a new maths topic in school and the child is finding it hard to grasp. In some cases, a vicious cycle of thinking sets in. The child feels stupid and begins to believe they are stupid. As soon as you pick up on this, gently chat about situations where the child felt an emotion (e.g. fear about the monsters under the bed) that turned out not to reflect reality. This is also a really good way of helping your child conquer any fears of new activities or experiences.
9. Cut out catastrophising
If your child is always imagining the worst-case scenario, chances are they’re catastrophising. A really useful technique to end catastrophising (your child’s or your own) is to proactively switch to problem-solving mode. Chat through what the child could do if the worst happened – who could they ask for help? Then begin to look at other options – what is the best thing that can happen? How can I make the best thing happen? After that, encourage a focus on realistic outcomes, asking what is most likely to happen. Then chat through what the child can do in that scenario.
