iServi News | 21 February 2020 | Term 1, Week 3
Parents can play a huge role in teaching their children to ‘think positive’.
Below are some tips for building optimism at home.
Practical Tips to Inspire Optimism
We know for a fact that positive thinking has many physical, mental, and emotional health benefits. Consider these strategies to inspire a positive attitude and teach your child how to think positive this year and beyond:
Be an example. Model a positive, encouraging attitude in all that you say, do, and believe.
Optimism is contagious. Positive thinking tends to breed positive results, and if your child sees positive results from your attitude, they are more likely to want to experience the same positive results. Show how optimism creates an ideal environment for happiness and how positivity influences the success rate of any goal you may have. Sometimes seeing is believing, and there’s no better model to show it than you.
Create a positive learning space for your student.
What better way to inspire optimism than ensuring that hopefulness is all around? A positive learning environment at home can do wonders for eliminating negativity and encouraging healthy thoughts as your child tackles new learning challenges and opportunities.
Help your student visualise a positive outcome from every scenario before starting.
It’s important to regularly plan goals with your student, and when doing so, clearly set the stage for what success looks like. How will it feel to accomplish the goal? What will the reward be? What does it mean to be successful? And why does it matter? Answering all of these questions can get your child excited about working toward the goal and will remind them of the positive outcomes to look forward to.
Eliminate negative verbiage from your student’s dialogue.
When you hear your student say “I can’t do it,” take a step back. Bring this negative verbiage to your child’s attention. Dive deeper into the meaning behind it. Ask questions. “Why can’t you do it?”; “What’s holding you back?”; “How can I help?”; “What do you need to be able to do it?” From there, lay out a plan to remove those barriers. Show your child that you are in this together, and together you can come up with a plan to turn “I can’t” into “We can.” This also helps children develop growth mindsets.
Help your student change negative thinking patterns.
As you bring negative words and thoughts to the attention of your child, make sure you’re encouraging him or her to replace the negativity with positivity. This popular method is a form of cognitive behavioural therapy, which is designed to change people’s thinking or behavioural patterns that are linked to certain difficulties. In this case the concept is simple: when you have a negative thought or reaction, notice it and replace it with a positive one. The more this occurs, the more positive your child’s thoughts, words, and actions will be. This is also a good way of finding Joy in everyday life.
Play the role of your student’s biggest fan.
As a parent your influence makes a big difference in your child’s levels of self-confidence. Your belief in your child can help them learn this sense of confidence and self-acceptance.
Mrs Franca Coutts
Vice Principal
