Traumas and Life Difficulties....Is it always bad?

When we think about our past "traumas" or "life difficulties", we often associated it something bad.  When we see our children suffer, there is often that instinctive expectation that "our children should not have to suffer".

But...... is this way of thinking helpful?

When I counselled my patients about life difficulties, I often talk about the 3 outcomes.

1. You can become traumatized by the experience and carry the "baggage" with you.
2. You can be stuck in "circular thinking" and essentially, be "limbo".
3. Or.... you can grow from the experience and become more resilient.

Our job as health professionals, is to help people learn to accept and be at peace with the situation, make sense of it  and somehow, reframe the situation so that they can actually grow and become more resilient from the experience. 

In essence, life difficulties with a good therapeutic dose of support, can be in itself, an opportunity to grow. 

When applying this concept to raising children, the belief that "My children should not have to suffer", may not always be helpful.  This belief is obviously useful because it compels us to protect our children, but on the flipside, it may lead us to excessive worry and become overprotective.  If a child has everything in his or her life and not have to suffer, do you think that they will ever grow as a person?

Consider a more helpful/realistic belief like, "My children will inevitably suffer at some stage in their life but this will help them grow.  I just need to support and equip them with the skills to overcome those life challenges."

Raising glass half-full kids written by our Guest Parenting Educator and Author Michael Grose Australia

I did some interesting research about ten years ago and I think the results would still stand up.

I looked at over 200 children who were chosen for student leadership positions in schools to work out why they were chosen. They had a predictable number of characteristics and qualities in common including: competence, trustworthiness, the ability to make and maintain friendships, and a number of other pro-social skills.

Interestingly, one characteristic most young leaders shared was the notion of positive tracking. That is, they looked for the bright side of life and the good in others far more than they looked for the negative.

Positive tracking is wonderful life skill that children can attain.

Positive trackers have their antennae tuned in and constantly looking for:

• Things that go well for them
• Strong points about their own and other people’s character
• The good in even negative situations
• Other people’s successes
• Have the ability to reframe a negative into a positive

Not unsurprisingly, positive trackers are popular as they make others feel good. They are also more confident and appear more confident to others.

Martin Seligman, through his ground breaking work on optimism and pessimism, found that while some children were genetically predisposed to optimism and positive thinking the vast majority simply echoed their parents’ thinking styles. To be exact, Seligman found that boys and girls copied their mother’s positive or negative tracking styles

Why mothers? Children spend more time around them than they do around fathers is Seligman’s thinking.

Seligman’s research is brilliant news for parents. It shows that we can influence our children’s thinking styles and help them develop positive thinking habits. Anyone with a very positive or very negative mother can attest to the powerful affects that such thinking had on them. The affects can last a lifetime.

That’s why it is important for parents to learn the skills of positive tracking and optimism and apply them judiciously to their parenting, particularly in children’s early years.

There are four ways parents can influence children’s tracking styles:

1. Modelling: Quite simply children reflect what they hear and parents present a style of thinking about the world that children copy. Either the world is full of hope or helplessness. It’s a no-brainer for parents.

2. Reframing: Teach children to reframe negative events more positively. If things are rotten then look at the world through a different frame. Is it a problem or a challenge? Do kids make errors or do they produce more opportunities to learn? Get the picture.

3. Tune their antennae in to the positive: Get their antennae tuned into the good stuff. Acknowledge loss, fear and rejection then help them tune their antennae for the good things that may come their way.

4. Introduce kids to self-talk: As kids move toward adolescence discuss the notion of self-talk and how kids can change it if they want to. Try it yourself. It's powerful.

Positivity is a quality that is highly attractive. It is a magnetic quality that attracts good fortune, people and even achievement. It is also something that can be taught as well as caught.

Michael Grose
Parenting Educator
http://www.parentingideas.com.au/

Anxiety and how it can affect your child's education

It is not uncommon for me to see students coming in with the presentation of, "Iam not coping with my first year of college". 

In college, the curriculum is not as structured, and close guidance by the lecturer is not the same as it is in secondary school.  Poor performance can often affect the student's anxiety and self esteem.

An anxious and perfectionistic student usually prefer certainty, structure, and predictability.  They do not usually cope well with big changes especially if it is something that they don't have much control over.

In my clinical practice, I usually like to take a very proactive approach and intervene quite early.  Ideally, before they start university or college, I would like to help them understand themselves better, help them to understand their anxiety better, help them to be more aware of more positive and realistic thinking, and equip them with more tools to deal with their emotions.

The main advice here is to seek help early, and prevention is better than cure.

Helping children to be aware of negative thought patterns...Why?

Being aware of our negative/unhelpful thoughts and shape it into more helpful ones is a skill for resilience and emotional flexibility.

One of the things I love to do in clinical practice is to help parents coach their children to develop these skills. The wonderful thing is, teaching and learning is bidirectional so when parents teach, they also learn.  Win win for the whole family!
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