How to Help Your Children Have a Positive Attitude
Most people act and react to their environment based on unconscious patterns that were acquired during childhood. Almost without realizing it, these thought patterns either limit you or help you grow. Therefore, it’s important to help children develop a positive attitude.
This inclination toward a positive or negative attitude begins to anchor very early on in the psyche, and begins to direct the perception of events around you. Therefore, it’s important to help children have a positive outlook from an early age.
We don’t see what is, but what we are
For some time, cognitive psychology has postulated that each person interprets reality through a filter composed of their beliefs. In other words, there’s a space between what actually happens and what a person perceives in which our mind operates.
For most of us, this filtering process goes unnoticed and we simply take for granted what we perceive is reality, and that that’s the only possible reality. But if you’re able to become aware of this process, you’ll understand why some people see life in pink and others in grey.
In conclusion, you don’t have the ability to completely control what happens in your life, but you do have the absolute power to decide how to react to it.
The benefits of having a positive attitude
If you invest time and effort in helping your child develop a positive perspective, you’ll be giving them a gift that will accompany them throughout their entire lives.
Having a positive attitude reinforces your self-esteem and the perception of your inner power to face challenges. A positive person knows that they’re their only source of stability and happiness and that they possess emotional independence. Therefore, they don’t feel the need to please or seek external approval.
Someone with this perspective understands that success depends only on themselves and that they have to have confidence to pursue it. In addition, they’re able to take responsibility for their actions and learn from every adverse situations.
How to make sure your children don’t develop a negative attitude
The environment in which you operate exerts a powerful influence on your mentality. Growing up in a difficult environment surrounded by negative energy will make the situation familiar to you, meaning you’ll internalize it as your own. In addition, you may even seek it unconsciously, as that’s what you’re used to.
Being exposed to critics who complain all the time will lower your mood and can even lead to anxiety. It’ll also happen with people who continuously try to undermine and limit you.
It’s important to keep your children away from toxic people and environments, and provide the most positive and enriching environments as possible.
How to help your children have a positive attitude
- Help them develop a healthy internal dialogue. Get them used to saying to themselves: “I’m able, I can improve, I can accomplish anything.”
- Be a role model of positivity and optimism. Try to show yourself as a happy, stable, and self-confident person.
- Teach them the value of negative emotions. Help them learn to identify them, feel them, and hear their message. In addition, teach them to learn from them instead of getting stuck in them.
- Also, train them to be their own center and to seek balance and happiness in themselves and not in external opinions.
- Explain that it’s healthy and acceptable to stray away from toxic people and environments. If they must coexist with them, they must have a protective mental shield so that negativity doesn’t penetrate them.
- Try to instill in them the importance of self-care, including healthy habits such as good nutrition, frequent exercise, and contact with nature.
- Highlight introspection as a beneficial way to hear and know themselves as well as contact with others as a way to enrich themselves and spend time with others.
- Always remind them that life is full of beauty, people who love them, and opportunities to enjoy. In addition, that bad times always make you stronger and help you rediscover how much love and support you have around you.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Rodríguez, E. M. (2019, 3 abril). ¿Aceptar las emociones negativas te puede hacer más feliz? Recuperado de https://lamenteesmaravillosa.com/aceptar-las-emociones-negativas-te-puede-hacer-mas-feliz/
- Park, N., Peterson, C., & Sun, J. K. (2013, abril). La Psicología Positiva: Investigación y aplicaciones. Recuperado de https://scielo.conicyt.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0718-48082013000100002