The ability to change takes action and it takes habit. She says lots of teachers and adults already say things to children like "Don't say, 'I can't do it right.' Say 'I can't do it yet.'"īut she cautions language and mindset isn't enough. So it's not just the challenge, it's the way that you look at the challenge," Jain says. "One of the biggest factors that influences our resilience is the way that we interpret our adversity. It's a concept made popular by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, who found that people who adopt a growth mindset believe that their abilities and skills are fluid - instead of fixed and static. Jain instead urges parents to promote a "growth mindset" to help children deal with anxiety. She says resilience is the capacity to keep going despite the odds, because you have this inner optimism of courage or hope or tolerance for risk. They just don't want to try anymore," Tsabary says. "This is a culture that is so obsessed with only the final letter grade, the final bank account, the final look. These fixed ways of looking at the world can paralyze people and are inadvertently taught to children. Tsabary says adults often think terms of dualities: positive or negative, success or failure, good or bad. Life Kit 6 Tips For Making A Career Change, From Someone Who Has Done It Encourage a growth mindset I need to change parts of who I am." Reframing what they feel is wrong with them into something positive allows them to move away from the desire to fit in, to a new desire, which is to be connected and to belong to themselves. "They quickly pick up that who I am is not being accepted. They don't believe they need to change something about them."īut Tsabary says that changes. "When children come to the world, they feel very connected to who it is they are. Jain says this also helps children get back a sense of wholeness, another superpower they are born with. She says reframing helps "teach children to stop trying to become something they're not and shift to realizing the potential of what they already are." Instead of beating yourself down you say, 'I'm such a creative person, that's why I have so many ideas, I'm not over thinking, I'm over creative." Likewise, "I'm kind of sensitive" can be reframed as "I have a lot of empathy," and "I'm quiet and don't like big crowds" becomes "I'm an amazing listener." "Suppose your child feels like,' I'm just such an over thinker.' You put on these glasses, which changes your perspective. Using their 'supervision' glasses, they can change the narrative, from 'what is wrong with me' into a celebration of themselves. So an exercise the authors suggest is helping children reframe their struggles. Parenting: Difficult Conversations Be Honest And Concrete: Tips For Talking To Kids About Death Help them reframe their thoughtsĬhildren are like everyone else: they want to fit in. She says just teaching children that they're in charge of which thoughts they respond to is a "huge empowering technique." "Once you realize that a thought doesn't have power over you and that you can literally just observe it and let it pass, you then decide which thoughts you wish to choose to react to," Tsabary says. They suggest encouraging children to notice the thoughts that pass through their minds, but recognize they have the choice to accept the thought or not. The "chaos and the busyness" of kids' lives interferes with their natural mindfulness, Jain and Tsabary say.
Jain says exploring different outcomes helps a child better assess the real probability of something happening.
Jain and Tsabary suggest the 'best case-worst case' scenario exercise to help a child more accurately assess risk and helps prevent them from "over-worrying."Įncourage your anxious child to write out the best thing that can happen in a certain situation, the worst thing that can happen and the most likely outcome. Worrying about 'what-if' questions can spiral out of control. I feel like it's more dangerous to go in a plane,'" Jain says. And statistically, that's actually more dangerous than flying," to the child this logic doesn't matter. So, for example, Jain says if they are anxious to fly in a plane, and you say, "you drive in a car every day. When a child feels really anxious, the feeling overpowers the part of their brain that thinks logically about risk. Parenting: Difficult Conversations Is It OK To Lie About Santa And The Tooth Fairy? Help them assess risk
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