Raise a “Can-Do“ Kid

[1185 words]

by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D.

[Optimistic Children are Depression-Proof—Here’s How to Build Resilience in Your Child]

Shane, 18 months old, stands in the sandbox, copious tears creating mud tracks on his cheeks. Sonya, his play group pal, just grabbed his favorite truck and he doesn’t know what to do. Luckily, Shane’s mom is nearby. Putting an arm around each of the two toddlers, she says to Shane, “Tell her you don’t like that.”
Shane has just been placed firmly on the path to optimism.

Experts have found that when children learn how to express their feelings and resolve disputes, they are also learning a form of empowerment that leads to optimism and resilience. According to Stephanie Shine, Ph.D., a human development and family studies teacher at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, “There’s an extremely strong sense of satisfaction in putting one’s finger on a problem. When a parent says to a screaming infant, ‘You’re really angry,’ that helps the baby go from a vague sense of misery to knowing what they’re feeling, and then eventually being able to figure out what to do about it.”

That is, points out Shine, when a child can say “You stepped on my toe and it hurts,” “That gives such a sense of power. What is the opposite of being optimistic? It’s being helpless.”

The Social Optimist

In addition, children with solid problem-solving and social skills are much less likely to fall into the trap of thinking “People are out to get me” or “No one likes me,” says Martin E. P. Seligman, co-author of The Optimistic Child (HarperPerennial, 1996). They are more comfortable in new situations and make new friends more easily. What’s more, points out Seligman, “They also know how to maintain friendships. They cooperate. They compromise. They trust others, and others develop trust in them. They handle conflicts well, respect differences, state their wishes clearly and assertively, apologize when they’re wrong, but stick to their guns when they’re right.”

Whether or not your child is beginning to have some problems with friends at school or shows signs of depression (either blaming herself for everything or blaming everyone else), consider working on improving his or her social and problem-solving skills. Seligman offers three rules of thumb: don’t solve every problem for your child, don’t be overly critical of your child’s attempts to solve his or her own problems, and make a point of modeling a flexible problem-solving strategy.

Here, in a nutshell, are five steps to share with your child:

1. Slow down and think. Replace what Seligman calls “hot thoughts” with “cool thoughts,” by considering a variety of reasons why something happened.
2. Get perspective by figuring out what the other person was thinking and whether he did what he did on purpose.  Teach your child to stand in the other person’s shoes for a moment.
3. Set goals. What does your child want to happen now? Does she want the other person to apologize, or never to do the thing again, or to be her friend?
4. Choose a path by analyzing which course of action is more likely to achieve the goal. Think of pluses and minuses.
5. Did the “plan” work? If not, might another one still have a chance?

An Optimism Gene?

Although some recent research has indicated that we may be born with certain traits, such as a tendency to eventually return to a certain setpoint of happiness no matter what happens to us, optimism is not a predetermined trait. While a tendency to regard life optimistically may be “heritable,” suggests Seligman, it’s not genetic. It’s the feeling of success, however a child achieves it, that leads to optimism. And parents play a large role in helping their kids feel successful.

In addition, your child is listening closely to your own explanatory style, and making it her own style too. For instance, Jennie Danowski, a freelance writer and mother of two in Redmond, Washington, says that both she and her husband are optimistic people. “We talk about events in a positive way. We try a lot to talk about how lucky we are that we’re all healthy. During all the stormy weather we’ve had in Seattle, with the snow and then the flooding, we were cooped up over the whole Christmas vacation. When five-year-old Taylor said, “The snow is getting kind of boring,” I said to her, “Yeah, but we’re so lucky we have our electricity, which a lot of people lost.“

Another key to optimism, according to Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Columbia University who has studied kindergartners extensively, is convincing kids that how well they do doesn’t necessarily say a thing about whether they are “good” or “bad.” When a child makes a mistake and the parent issues a global judgment, such as saying, “I’m very disappointed in you,” the child acts more helplessly afterward.

The best response to a child’s mistake is “strategy criticism,” such as saying, “Try it again,” or “Maybe you could think of another way to do it,” or “What could you have done?” When a child gets that kind of feedback, she is most likely to feel smart and to try to solve the problem another way.

False Positive Thinking

On the other hand, it isn’t helpful to try to raise your child’s self-esteem with reassurance, regardless of how the child has performed. According to Karen Reivich, Ph.D., a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of The Optimistic Child, such reassurance invalidates the child’s sense of the world and of himself.
“When a child comes back from football tryouts and didn’t make it, and he’s saying to himself it’s because he’s no good at football, and father or mother says, ‘Oh, come on, that’s not true, you can be anything you want to be,’ the child knows that’s not true. It’s actually teaching the child that the parent believes that he or she is not strong enough to take the truth. And,” says Reivich, “it’s sort of crazy-making.”

Instead, help the child assess whether there is room for change.  “I might not naturally be the most coordinated person in the world,” says Reivich. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t become more coordinated. But I may have to practice three hours a day after school.  Is making the team important enough to me that I’m willing to do these things?”

Above all, encourage the process of trying. “I view failure as a wonderful skill to master,” says Reivich. “When you fail, what do you need to do next? It’s just a step in a process of problem-solving.”

And when your child says, “I screwed up,” or “I’m stupid” or “I’m no good at drawing,” help him assess the situation by asking questions such as, “Okay, you’re telling me you’re stupid. Why would you say that?”