Optimism is essential to a child’s well-being. Seeing “the glass half-full” or remembering that “attitude is altitude” to overcome what’s negative are traits of resilient children. Resiliency is key to success throughout childhood and into adulthood, and we all want to positively influence our kids.
Pessimism, on the other hand, is derided, and rightfully so. We’re all striving for happiness, and a negative person is not a happy one. In fact, negative emotions will damage a child’s well-being quicker than positive emotions can maintain or rebuild it.
But is there ever a place for negative thinking in our lives or in our homes? Several years ago, Focus on the Family ran a one minute message on our local radio station. The announcer acknowledged the power of positive thinking. He then noted, however, that negative thinking “can be a good thing too.”
Focus on the Family’s Radio Message on Negative Thinking That Can Positively Influence.
The rest of the message went something like this:
“It’s negative thinking that leads me to buckle my seat belt when I get in a car. I might have an accident and be badly hurt if I don’t strap myself in. It’s negative thinking that causes me to buy life insurance to protect my family. I could die suddenly and leave them in financial difficulty. There’s nothing positive about that thought! It’s negative thinking that encourages me to avoid addictive behaviors such as the misuse of drugs or alcohol or tobacco. And how about the discipline of children? There are times when mild reprimands and punishment are necessary. But you couldn’t call that a positive experience for the parent or the child!”
Opportunities for positivity sometimes come through negative thinking.
Since hearing that radio ad, I haven’t become a pessimist. I have taken note, however, of some of the powerful lessons and opportunities that might come from “negative thinking.” Are there times when negative thoughts might positively influence us or our kids?
There is never reason to seek out negativity to capitalize on the lessons it might teach. Life has a way of sending plenty of negative experiences your child’s way without a parent being on the look-out. Assessing each one, though, and identifying how the negativity might positively benefit your child in the future is an excellent way to instill positivity in your child. It’s also a great way to become more positive and more productive yourself.
Here are 5 negative life-truths that we try to learn from, rather than ignore, at our house.
1. We’re all on Earth to bug each other.
Growing up, each time my siblings or I ran to my dad to tattle-tale on each other, he responded the same. “We’re all on Earth to bug each other,” he would say. As a father myself now, I frequently recognize the truth in this saying. This is especially true when I have to stop my kids from yelling at each other.
Yes, it does seem a little anti-social to assume we’re all on Earth to bug each other. But the purpose of life is to learn to love. And not just to love the warm, nice, and good people who surround us. But to love the distant, mean, and prickly people around us too. We’ve got to learn to love even those who bug us. Without being bugged once in awhile, how would we ever learn to open our hearts? How would we learn to walk in someone else’s shoes or to accept anyone different from us? You will positively influence your kids by teaching them to love in spite of the difficulty of doing so.
I am easily bugged. Long lines at the grocery store bug me. Bikers who ring their bell at me from behind while I’m jogging bug me. The slow driver in front of me while I’m in the fast lane bugs me. In fact, I spend much of my day working on cultivating patience.
It’s a struggle. But it’s rewarding as well. When I can remind myself that it’s my job to learn to love, my tolerance increases, and my perspective changes. Be grateful for the times that you feel bugged. They’re reminders to work on loving others. And, I as I tell my kids, they’re also reminders to not be the person that’s always bugging someone else.
2. You don’t always get what you want.
This should actually be, “You can’t always get what you want.”
I know this because my mom sang the chorus of this Rolling Stones classic to me whenever I threw a tantrum. For some reason, she sang it incorrectly, though, replacing “can’t” with “don’t.”
The reality is, you don’t always get what you want. As disappointing as this may be, it’s an important lesson for a child to learn, and will positively influence here throughout her life. Telling a child “no” can be a good thing. Hearing “no” conditions her to the fact that life will not always go her way.
It’s hard to tell a child “no.” No sane father wants to watch his 2-year-old flip a lid because he can’t go to the park on a Saturday afternoon. (And that’s why my 2-year-old goes to the park every Saturday afternoon.) All joking aside, telling your kids no takes courage. This courage is especially required on those occasions when you could say “yes.” Because by saying yes, you could avoid the fall-out of saying “no.”
By always giving into your kids’ desires, though, you rob them of some of the happiness they would find in making the most of their situation and surroundings. And at some point in time, reality is going to set in, and all kids will learn that you really don’t, and really can’t, always get what you want. If they haven’t learned to deal with that fact at a young age, adult-life will only be more painful for them, and for you.
3. There will always be someone better than you.
Another gem from my childhood, this is a lesson I wish I could positively influence my kids by teaching them this without sounding so abrasive. I remember complaining after a soccer game about my ability to score compared to some of the others on my team. My parents’ response? Don’t compare yourself to anyone else on your team. There will always be someone better than you at everything you do. Just focus on improving yourself.
Every child learns quickly that someone else on the playground is always smarter, more athletic, or better looking than them. Someone else always has more friends, newer clothes, or richer parents. But rather than allowing this to get them down, it can be inspiring to know that it doesn’t matter what others have or don’t have. All that matters is you.
This is an especially hard lesson for a parent to recognize and teach, however, in today’s world of entitlement, where society tries to make every child a winner. And what a child learns from life’s hard-knocks on the playground isn’t always translated into the messages a child receives at home.
As an adult, I sometimes fall into the comparison trap, looking around at others rather than facing forward and focusing on my own life and future. When we are too focused on comparing to others, it’s easy to lose focus on what really matters— our own development and our own relationships.
Teaching your child that there is always someone better than him is a good reminder that comparison is futile. Instead, every child should be praised for being the absolute best that he can. Positively influence your kids with this message and you’ll set them up for life.
4. If at first you don’t succeed, try something else.
I wish this picture was taken at our house. I can only imagine how hard this couple worked at painting the wall behind them. At our house, though, this never would have happened. Because I know both Lizzy and I are incapable of painting. Rather than trying to spiff up the house on our own, we deal with old paint or save money to hire it done one wall at a time.
I admire individuals who live by the adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” That’s the ideal I try to live by. But are there ever times when no matter how hard you try, you simply can’t make something work out?
Sometimes, trying something else, rather than trying again, can help a child to eradicate the negative.
Passion does not always equal ability, and just because you are passionate about something doesn’t mean you will be good at it. I once had a mentor positively influence my life and suggest that rather than trying to decide what to study in college by focusing on what I was good at, I should instead focus on what I was not good at. Doing this limited possible fields of study and helped me to narrow my focus.
No matter how hard I tried at math, for example, it never clicked. It was only when I stopped worrying about how I was ever going to understand math that I learned I could get along in life without being a math expert and that I could focus instead on something else.
A resilient child will try again, and again, and again. At some point, though, resiliency also allows us to acknowledge when our time could be better spent doing something else. Not everyone can be a professional athlete or a movie star. A child who can realize when to quit and where to focus her time and resources instead will be well equipped for success as an adult.
5. Expect the worst and hope for the best to minimize the negative.
Although some might say that expecting the worst is surrendering to negativity, I like to think of it simply as managing expectations. Hope anchors us to optimism and allows us to enter every situation confident that things will work out. Expecting the worst, however, anchors us to the real world, and can positively influence us by humbling and preparing us to accept less than ideal circumstances.
Anyone expecting the worst will always be happy no matter the cards they’re dealt. And hoping for the best allows someone to be happy while preparing for extenuating circumstances.
This ability to manage expectations is essential for me every day at work. As I mentally prepare for the day, it is easy to succumb to negativity by thinking about certain intricate cases or certain difficult clients I would rather not deal with. But in hoping for the best, I arrive at my desk each day ready to work, certain that things will work out, and ready to be ok with the day even if things don’t all work out as planned.
Coupling an acknowledgment of reality with the power of hope allows a child to cope with disappointment, while staying positive and happy.
Optimism doesn’t mean ignoring everything negative.
A truly optimistic person does not simply ignore negativities, but instead confronts them head on. Doing that takes practice, however. Life is a perfect training ground, and in attempting to learn from and teach these 5 negative truths, we’ll be better able to equip our children to deal with all the adventure life has in store for them. Positively influence your kids, and let them know that some negatives in life translate into growth.
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