How to raise optimism in children?
All parents want their children to grow up cheerful, not suffering from doubts, anxieties or bad moods. People need optimism as it is a condition that helps us to achieve our goals, despite failures and obstacles. Every child has an innate sense of moving forward. If you watch a baby who learns to walk, you can see that despite of all the falls, he or she has an overwhelming desire to walk, grow and develop. Let us find out how to help a child not to lose, but to increase, optimism as he or she grows up.
A sad mood, loss of interest in one’s favourite games and hobbies, low self- esteem and feelings of self-doubt, a pessimistic and gloomy vision of one’s future are more common among children and adolescent whose parents suffer from depression. After becoming adults such children are likely to experience depression more often than their peers.
A sad mood, loss of interest in one’s favourite games and hobbies, low self- esteem and feelings of self-doubt, a pessimistic and gloomy vision of one’s future are more common among children and adolescent whose parents suffer from depression. After becoming adults such children are likely to experience depression more often than their peers.
Young children understand things without words. Even when a child takes the first steps, he or she tries to touch everything, as well as to reach out to everything and to capture everything.
When a mother is constantly stressed out and waits for something bad to happen, it makes her child feel that the world is dangerous. But if a mother is calm and smiling, her child feels protected and the world seems friendly and interesting to him.
Finding time to listen to your children, and to talk about their feelings and emotions is a means of helping them to cope with their fears, anxieties and doubts.
As children grow up, explain thatcrises happen in life and are inevitable but one can always overcome them; the main thing is not to get upset and not become isolated from others. You should not try to protect children from mistakes, as they are essential for the development of their character. When children make a mistake and then analyzes their behaviour and draw certain conclusions, it helps them to become independent and self-confident.
Do not forget to encourage the success of your child, always give praise, and do not scold him when he fails, but try to give assure that he will manage to succeed next time - bad mark in mathematics, for instance, is not the end of the world.
Teach your child to enjoy common pleasures, for that distinguishes optimists from pessimists. For example, when a pessimistic child goes with his mother to a dentist he has a sad look. As for an optimistic boy, on his way to a dentist he notices common pleasures, such as a beautiful bird, a bright leaf that has fallen from a tree and amusing reflections on cars parked along the street. The pessimist child thinks only of pain he will have to suffer, while the optimist thinks of how he and his mother will be going to the store for a new toy after visit to the dentist.
Teach your baby to notice something good even in unpleasant situations. If you were planning to go for a walk, but suddenly it begins to rain, this is not a reason to become sad, as you can stay at home and bake a delicious pie together. If a child is sick and feels bad, he should not become upset, because even while staying in bed he can watch a new cartoon or read his favourite book. Dear mothers, try to encourage your children in this way, so that next time it rains they themselves will offer you to bake a cake.
Being able to enjoy common pleasures and see something good in everything is an excellent quality that will certainly help your child later in life.
SAFIA FOKINA ISLAM.RU JOURNALIST
