My child's outlook is constantly on the negative
of any situation, despite my attempts to model optimism
and highlight the positive mm-Hmm.
How can I help shift this pessimism?
Well, that's an interesting one
because some children,
they are born attorneys.
Uh, sorry if you're an attorney
or married to an attorney, right?
But, but, but what they do is they question everything.
And they're, you know, maybe a little bit more
on the skeptical side.
They're questioning this. Now, again, is that a personality
or is this child just chronically
find everything's wrong?
So I I, again, we're just stepping back
and asking the question because sometimes it's
that our child, that's how they get attention.
That is the role that they are feeling in your family.
So maybe I said that word wrong, filling in your family.
F-I-L-L-I-N-G. Is that how they get attention?
Is that how they get your energy?
I might try to catch them off guard on something that, Hey,
that's interesting what you just said there, right?
I, and, and, and again, what are they learning?
How are they communicating?
You wanna find positive exchanges with them.
So see if we can give them attention in different ways.
See if we can pull them out of, I don't know, maybe it's
what we call the combative lifestyle
or the combative where they're combating everything.
The other part of it is, um, give him a challenge every day.
I want you to think this is research based.
Really interesting. Martin Seligman, he said
that if you want to be happier in six months from today,
we can start doing things right
now that will help create that.
One of those things is to identify what we're grateful for
and why every day do it.
Do three separate things today I am grateful for,
and why am I grateful for that?
Why did it happen? And Dr.
Seligman said, when you do that, you're more likely to be,
uh, happier down the road.
Mm-Hmm. So that being said,
what we're encouraging them to do is to see a positive.
Now, they may not want to,
but it's just, again, we're just trying some experiments
to see we're helps them.
Because when a child has a negative attitude, we also have
to say, have they had experiences
that have broken their trust in people in society?
So they just don't like people
because people have hurt them.
So have they been bullied? Have they had, uh,
previous experiences that have turned them away from others?
So those are some of the things that I would want to know
and observe and,
and see, um, if a little bit of practice on some
of those things, interactions with them could be positive.