Freeing Your Child From Negative Thinking
Powerful Practical Strategies - Tamar E. Chansky, Ph.D.
Dec 3, 2008
Children who think negatively tend to generalize, exaggerate and blame others for their problems.These negative thoughts can lead to problems at school, with friends and ultimately to depression.
Freeing Your Child From Negative Thinking by Tamar Chansky, Ph. D., published by Da Capo Press, 2008, SBN# 9780738211855, includes examples of what to say to children, how to identify strengths and how to encourage independence.
Identifying Strengths
Identifying strengths in children is important because they’re often overlooked. This is especially true if the focus is on things like marks rather than efforts or positive characteristics. Children then become filled with anxiety and feel pressure to perform. They are then likely to miss positive things about themselves.
Other Causes of Negative Thinking
Environment
If a child is neglected and basic emotional or physical needs are not being met, they’re not likely to have a positive outlook on life. Depressed parents sometimes lose focus of their family and they may not contribute towards anyone’s needs, including their own.
Stress
Over scheduled children are easily stressed and could also be sleep deprived. Each child is different and some need more unstructured down time than others.
Parenting Styles
The four styles of parenting people are familiar with include Permissive, Authoritarian, Uninvolved and Authoritative. Authoritarian parenting focuses more on enforcing rules rather than supporting children emotionally.
Chansky shares that Authoritative and not Authoritarian parenting is the preferred style for encouraging positive thinking because it offers children more support. The result is that children are more likely to have higher self-esteem.
Solutions for Negative Thinking
- Parents are encouraged to listen more rather than rushing in to offer solutions to their children.
- Allowing children to make mistakes without jumping in and rescuing them all the time is important. It helps build independence and is good for building confidence and resilience.
It’s natural to want to protect children, but if parents fix everything for them, they don’t learn how to deal with failure. Sometimes they don’t even want help but parents try to fix things anyway.
- Changing and replacing thoughts rather than just stopping them is recommended. There are various ways to do this and Chansky teaches how to help children of all ages change their thoughts.
Freeing Your Child From Negative Thinking is an excellent action based book that offers solutions on how to turn your children around if they’re stuck in a negative thinking spiral. Tools include scripts, outlines of action plans, dos and don’ts and how to seek a therapist if necessary.
- Tamar E. Chansky, Ph.D. has also authored the books Freeing Your Child from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Freeing Your Child from Anxiety. She's the founder and director of the Children's Center for OCD and Anxiety. Get more information from the website WorryWiseKids\
Another good parenting book suggestion: How to Talk So Kids Will Listen
