Can you make your child more optimistic? Optimism, or the conviction that things will work out in the end, is a cornerstone of resilience, and an asset in achieving any kind of success. Research shows that optimists, who believe they can achieve success, are in fact more able to do so. They are less likely to get depressed, get fewer illnesses, have longer relationships, and live longer.

When life seems to be dealing one blow after another, you want your child to believe that things can get better. Otherwise, why should he pull himself together and keep going?

There is some evidence that optimism is an inherited trait, and certainly we know there is a biological basis to much depression as well as to a tendency to be upbeat.

There is also evidence, however, that we learn at an early age how to view the world and its potential from those around us, and that a depressed, negative parent can easily influence us to interpret events in a negative way. Findings from Cognitive Therapy show that we can change the way we talk to ourselves about events and how we interpret them, which has a direct impact on our emotional reaction to our experiences.

The bottom line is this: even if you are born with a tendency to pessimism, you can greatly increase your optimism quotient.

So how do you help your child to become more optimistic?

1. Notice how your child thinks about things.

Is the glass half full or half empty? When something bad happens, does he see it as exemplary of his entire life, does he think the misfortune is pervasive, permanent, and personally directed at him? (“Why does this always happen to me?!) If you see that he’s pessimistic, you can help him to learn optimism.

2. Confront Pessimism.

Pessimistic thinking can be defined as expecting bad things to happen. Pessimists think catastrophically. For example, they might say, “I won’t make any friends at this new school. No one is going to like me.”

To confront pessimism, challenge the four thought patterns that lead to pessimistic thinking:

-Permanence: “This always happens and always will.”

-Pervasive: “Nothing ever goes right.”

-Personal: “This always happens to me.”

-Powerlessness: “There is no real relationship between cause and effect; things just happened; I am the victim of what has occurred.”

3. Teach your child Optimism.

The trick is to remember that you perceive a setback any way you choose. Help him choose to perceive setbacks as temporary, isolated (not pervasive, in other words they don’t indicate anything about any other part of his life), not personal, and within his power to fix.

How can a setback be impersonal? Certainly, some bad things are just bad luck, and could have happened to anyone. In many cases, of course, it is clear that he brought the setback on himself, but it still doesn’t indicate anything about who he is, but how he chose to act. In other words, he failed the test because he didn’t study, not because he always fails tests and always will.

Maybe most important, help your child to see that he isn’t powerless in the situation. Martin Seligman, the trail-blazing researcher on optimism, says that the most important question to ask when confronted with misfortune is: “Is it possible that there are some ways you could change the outcome with some personal effort on your part?”

4. Help your child learn to cultivate Optimistic Thinking

…with these three ideas:

1. There are actions I could or can take to change the situation.
2. There are specific reasons something happened.
3. The cause is clearly leading to the effect, and that is true over time.
4. Confront negative self talk.

The problem with self talk is that when you hear it, you act as if it were true. Cognitive therapists teach pessimists to confront this kind of thinking by a three step process: Notice it, Externalize it, and Dispute it (NED). You can teach yourself, and your child, the NED process:

Notice negative self talk.

Externalize it. Treat it as if it were said by an external person whose mission in life is to make you miserable. (Some kids call him NED.)

Dispute it in the same way you would an external person. We generally have the skill of disputing other people when they make false accusations, and we can learn to do so with ourselves as well.

6. Model Optimism.

Do you say things like “I know we’ll find a parking space soon!” or “We’ll NEVER find a parking space! I KNEW this would happen!”? Your view of the world and your prospects within it communicates itself to your child daily. If you want to help your child becomes more optimistic, experiment with learning to be more optimistic yourself.