by UmiNoor

Created on: July 30, 2010

Children who are optimistic are much better able to cope with life’s many disappointments and to bounce back from failure. They are on the whole much happier children than their pessimistic counterpart.  As such, it is the duty of parents to make sure that their children are raised to become optimistic so that they would lead a much fulfilling and healthier life.

The following are three strategies parents can adopt to raise optimistic children.

1. Being a model of optimism

Children learn better from what they can see and hear you do rather than from what you tell them to do. If you’re always cynical and critical of others, children would also emulate that and see others cynically and critically which would not contribute much to making them optimistic children.

By being optimistic yourself, your children would also grow up to become optimistic. Every time you feel critical, stop yourself and try to think of something positive to say. This may not be easy to do at first but with practice, you would be able to do it automatically.

2. Emotion and thought connection

Stress to your children that there is a connection between how they feel and what they’re thinking. How a person thinks would always affect how he feels. And by realizing this, a child can see that if he thinks positively he would also have positive feelings and the same is true about negative thoughts. Negative thoughts would inadvertently result in negative feelings. Therefore, you need to stress to your children that it is best to have good thoughts only.

3. Dealing with bad events

Parents should teach their children to construct a much more exact explanation as to why bad things happen. Sometimes when a child gets a bad grade in school, he would feel disappointed. He must be taught that one bad grade doesn’t reflect badly on himself as a person. Perhaps he didn’t prepare adequately for the test and therefore did badly.

He should be made to understand that his one bad grade can be redressed by being more attentive in class and doing his homework or other things which would help to improve his grade.

Children must also be taught not to augment a bad situation and to think that it is so disastrous that they cannot get out of the situation. However, this shouldn’t make them run away from being responsible when they’re the cause of the bad event for example like the loss of a valuable item.

Parents should make it clear to their children that for every behavior there are consequences and that the consequences are not as bad as they think they could be. In a way, not only are parents raising optimistic children, they are also raising responsible ones.

Almost all parents would like to raise optimistic children because they are happier and mentally healthier children. By being optimistic yourself and teaching your children to always think positively and to find the correct explanation to bad situations, you would be able to raise optimistic children.

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