5 Steps to Raising Optimistic Children
by Dr. Tony Fiore

I had just completed a session with 17-year old Julie who suffered from severe depression. Julie believed she was a total failure and would never be able to change anything in her life. Julie also felt all her shortcomings were her own fault. Where, I ask myself, did such a young person acquire this negative and fatalistic thinking?

The answer soon became apparent when I invited her parents into the session. They began discussing numerous life events and explaining them in ways that their children were learning. The car, for example, got dented because you can’t trust anybody these days; Mom yelled at brother because she was in a bad mood; you can’t get ahead in this world unless you know somebody, etc.

As a parent, your own thinking style is always on display and your children are listening intently!

The Importance of Optimism

Why should you want your child to be an optimist?

Because, as Dr. Martin Seligman explains:

“Pessimism (the opposite of optimism) is an entrenched habit of mind that has sweeping and disastrous consequences: depressed mood, resignation, underachievement and even unexpectedly poor physical health.”

Children with optimistic thinking skills are better able to interpret failure, have a stronger sense of personal mastery and are better able to bounce back when things go wrong in their lives.

Because parents are a major viagra to the thinking styles of their children’s developing minds, it is important to adhere to the following five steps to ensure healthy mental habits in your children.

How Parents Can Help

Step 1: Learn to think optimistically yourself. What children see and hear indirectly from you as you lead your life and interact with others influences them much more than what you try to ‘teach’ them.

You can model optimism for your child by incorporating optimistic mental skills into your own way of thinking. This is not easy and does not occur over night. But with practice, almost everyone can learn to think differently about life’s events – even parents!

Step 2: Teach your child that there is a connection between how they think and how they feel. You can do this most easily by saying aloud how your own thoughts about adversity create negative feelings in you.

For example, if you are driving your child to school and a driver cuts you off, verbalize the link between your thoughts and feelings by saying something like “I wonder why I’m feeling so angry; I guess I was saying to myself: ‘Now I’m going to be late because the guy in front of me is going so darn slow. If he is going to drive like that he shouldn’t drive during rush hour. How rude.’”

Step 3: Create a game called ‘thought catching.’ This helps your child learn to identify the thoughts that flit across his or her mind at the times they feel worst. These thoughts, although barely noticeable, greatly affect mood and behavior.

For instance, if your child received a poor grade, ask:

“When you got your grade, what did you say to yourself?”

Step 4: Teach your child how to evaluate automatic thoughts. This means acknowledging that they things you say to yourself are not necessarily accurate.

For instance, after receiving the poor grade your child may be telling himself he is a failure, he is not as smart as other kids; he will never be able to succeed in school, etc. Many of these self-statements may not be accurate, but they are ‘automatic’ in that situation.

Step 5: Instruct your child on how to generate more accurate explanations (to themselves) when bad things happen and use them to challenge your child’s automatic but inaccurate thoughts. Part of this process involves looking for evidence to the contrary (good grades in the past, success in other life areas, etc).

Another skill to teach your child to help him or her think optimistically is to ‘decatastrophize’ the situation – that is – help your child see that the bad event may not be as bad or will not have the adverse consequences imagined. Few things in life are as devastating as we fear, yet we blow them up in our minds.

Parents can influence the thinking styles of their children by modeling the principals of optimistic thinking.

About the Author: Dr. Tony Fiore (http://www.angercoach.com) is a So. California licensed psychologist, and anger management trainer. His company, The Anger Coach, provides anger and stress management programs, training and products to individuals, couples, and the workplace. Sign up for his free monthly newsletter “Taming the Anger Bee” at http://www.angercoach.com

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Ten Ways to Have More Responsible Children

We’d all like our kids to develop into responsible people. How can we help to ensure that our kids learn the lessons of responsibility?

Here are some ideas:

1. Start them with tasks when they’re young.

Young kids have a strong desire to help out, even as young as age 2.

They can do a lot more than you think if you’re patient and creative. This helps build confidence and enthusiasm for later tasks in their life.

2. Don’t use rewards with your kids

If you want your kids to develop an intrinsic sense of responsibility, they need to learn the “big picture” value of the things they do. They won’t learn that if they’re focused on what they’re going to “get.”

3. Use natural consequences when they make mistakes.

If they keep losing their baseball glove somewhere, let them deal with the consequences. Maybe they have to ask to borrow one for the game. Maybe they have to buy a new one if it’s lost. If you rescue them every time they screw up, they’ll never learn responsibility.

4. Let them know when you see them being responsible.

Specifically point out what you like about their behavior. This will make it more likely to continue to happen.

5. Talk often about responsibility with your kids.

Make responsibility a family value, let them know it’s important.

6. Model responsible behavior for your kids.

This is where they’ll learn it from. Take care of your stuff. Try to be on time. They’re watching you very closely.

7. Give them an allowance early in their life.

Let them make their own money decisions from an early age. They’ll learn their lessons in a hurry. Don’t bail them out if they run out of money.

8. Have a strong, unfailing belief that your kids are responsible.

They’ll pick up on this belief and they’ll tend to rise to the level of expectation. And keep believing this even when they mess up!

9. Train them to be responsible.

Use role play and talk to them about exactly what kind of behavior you expect from them. It’s hard for kids to be responsible when they don’t know what it looks like.

10. Get some help and support for your parenting.

It’s hard to know sometimes whether you’re being too controlling or too permissive as a parent. Talk to other parents, read books, join parent support groups, whatever will help you feel like you’re not alone.

——————————————————————————–

Mark Brandenburg MA, CPCC, coaches men to be better fathers and husbands. He is the author of “25 Secrets of Emotionally Intelligent Fathers” http://www.markbrandenburg.com/father.htm Sign up for his FREE bi-weekly newsletter, “Dads, Don’t Fix Your Kids,” at http://www.markbrandenburg.com.

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Today we are going to discuss you.

What I mean by that is that I want to discuss you as a parent. Many parents who have an ODD child, or an ADHD child, a defiant teen or just plain difficult children feel very ineffective and helpless.

I want to dispel some of the negative feelings that you might be having.

First, it is important to understand one thing. No child comes to the world completely blank. Children come in with certain personality traits, certain problems, certain skills and certain abilities and that combination makes up your child. Some children are easy to raise, and some children are hard to raise. The general principle is that ODD children, ADHD children, and even some normal children are much more difficult to raise than other children.

You might be getting a lot of negative feedback from people around you about your child’s behavior and your inability to be an effective parent. I would say in that many cases, if not in most cases this is entirely unfair.

Parents who complain about another parent’s parenting skills, do not have the difficult children you have nor do they have the same tests and trials that you have. An ODD child’s behavior with a very, very good parent will be much worse than the behavior of a normal easily controlled child whose parent is not as good.

I will give you a couple of examples of this. We had our children evaluated by the school psychologist. A few years earlier he evaluated my first two children. I remember when he evaluated my third child he came out of his office and said to me “This one is much easier, isn’t he?”

And he was. My third child is a very easy child. My first two children were very difficult. It is not a reflection of my parenting skills. It is the way it was. My children have different basic natures.

Once we were at a family gathering with another family and this same child, who was the easy child, was playing with another child of the same age. They began to get a little wild. The father said to me that this child of his is the wildest child he has.

I told him, “This is my easiest child.”

And, it is true. He has very calm children and I have very wild children. But, again, you cannot compare the two children nor can you compare each of our parenting skills. One thing you have to understand as a parent is that if your child is not behaving properly, if he is ODD or ADHD, it is not a reason not to fix the problem.

You have to get the parenting skills you need to handle your ODD child or ODD teen. You have to get a parenting problem that addresses these issues specifically. If a child is under twelve, you need a specific child behavior program for children under twelve. If he is between twelve and eighteen, you need a teen behavior program that addresses teenage behavior. Each age group needs different techniques and you should not get a program that blends them all together.

You should understand also that if you invest in developing parenting skills for your child and address the problems properly, you are doing your job as a parent to its fullest. You should also accept the child you have.

Your child’s behavior is not a reflection of you or your skill as a parent, provided that you take the proper steps to get the help and advice you need. You should feel very proud of your child and of your ability as a parent if you get your child to improve his behavior even a little bit. It is not an easy task.

If you have a hard child, no one can really blame you for that. If they do it is their problem and not your problem.

Parenting a difficult defiant child or teen doesn’t have to be hard. You just need to know what to do.

For more information on how to handle your ODD child or teen:



If your child is 2-11 go to:

The ODD Child Program



If your child is 12 and older go to:

The ODD Teen Program

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How to Get Your ODD Child or Teen to Cooperate

The most important thing that you can do to get your child to comply with your wishes is to build up your relationship.

Children have a natural desire to please their parents. This is true when they are young and it is also true when they become teenagers. Even adults have a need and desire to gain approval from their parents.

You can use what nature has given you as a way to help your child to do what you ask.

Now, if your child or teen wants so much to have your approval, why is it that he just won’t listen?

The reason is that other factors get in the way. For an ODD child or difficult defiant teen probably the biggest reason they defy adults is that they resent the subordination they feel toward the adult.

They just don’t want to be dominated by anyone and they won’t take orders no matter how much sense it makes and even if it is for their own benefit.

For an ODD child or teen, the issue is who is in control, and almost everything else is secondary.

With such a child, getting them to obey is a major task. You can’t make them do anything. The more you try, the more they will fight you.

So how do you get such a child to listen to you?

You can’t force your ODD child to obey you. But you can get your ODD child to want to obey you.

You do this proactively, by developing and using your relationship.

Developing and strengthening a positive relationship with your child has numerous benefits:

• You will be happier
• Your child will be happier
• You will enjoy your time together much more
• You will reduce the amount of fighting and arguing
• Your child will be much less likely to get into serious trouble.

The key to handling a defiant child or teenager is not discipline or control. It is using your natural relationship created through the parent child bond to get your child or teen to want to comply willingly.

For an easy step-by-step plan to build your relationship with your child and end your child’s difficult behavior forever,

For children 2-11 go to

Child Behavior Help

For children 12 and older

Go to:

Teen Behavior Help

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Why Ignoring Bad Behavior Doesn’t Work

How often have you been told, overlook the bad behavior and focus on the good?

This is great parenting advice. Ignoring your child’s bad behavior makes a lot of sense.

In fact, in many instances it is the best parenting approach.

For example, let’s take the case of Andy.

Andy is a three year old who has just thrown himself on the floor and is kicking and shrieking and having a full-blown tantrum. There may be a number of reasons Andy is having a tantrum right now.

Perhaps he is over tired. Perhaps he wants something and just doesn’t know how to express what he wants in a more eloquent fashion.

So if, you as Andy’s mother, are an astute parent you will ignore the tantrum. At a later time when Andy is calm you can make the effort to understand what was bothering him and teach him to express himself verbally.

Do this consistently and eventually Andy will outgrow the tantrums.

But what would happen if you responded to the tantrum? What if you showed Andy that the tantrum upset your or got you to pay attention to him in a way that just talking doesn’t seem to do?

Do this often enough and Andy will realize that throwing a tantrum equals instant attention. For a child, that’s like stumbling upon a pot of gold.

Andy’s original reason for throwing the tantrum may have had nothing to do with getting your attention. But if you show Andy that tantrums are your hot button it won’t be long before he starts using this new found gold anytime he feels he is being ignored or wants more attention or just wants to get back at you.

Therefore, ignoring bad behavior is an excellent first line parenting technique and one you should always consider trying.

The problem, if you have a difficult or an Oppositional Defiant Disorder child he will just not be ignored.

He will just keep on escalating the bad behavior until it gets to the point where you can’t ignore it. He might start bopping his younger sister. He might stir up his classmates. But eventually he will find a way to make you get involved.

Ignoring the bad and focusing on the good….It’s a great parenting technique that just about everybody writes about.

The problem is…

It just doesn’t work. Not if you have an ODD or difficult child.

So, if you have an ODD or difficult child, then one thing you must definitely not do is ignore the bad behavior.

This is important for you to know. If you have an Oppositional Defiant Disorder Child or Defiant Teen and the things you are doing as a parent are not working, it is not your fault. It’s not because you are a bad parent or just don’t know what you are doing, as many people you know are quick to tell you.

The reason you are struggling with your child or teen is that they are tough to raise. Your child is much harder than most other children.

Difficult children require more expertise on your part. Just doing what works for other parents with their kids will not work for you. You need to get the information and the parenting skills that will help you with your child.

Parenting a difficult defiant child or teen doesn’t have to be hard. You just need to know what to do.

For more information on how to handle your ODD child or teen:



If your child is 2-11 go to:

The ODD Child Program



If your child is 12 and older go to:

The ODD Teen Program

Related Blogs