How to develop positive thinking in children
Positive thinking should be taught to children from a younger age. Developing positive thinking in children is not that tough if you follow some simple steps in your daily life. Here are some of the tips and information about developing positive thinking in children.
Developing positive thinking in children is very important because this is one of those important factors which is important to live a successful and happy life. It is the base of living. But before learning how to develop positive thinking in children, you should learn what is positive thinking and what is its need so as to understand why it should be developed in your child.What is positive thinking??
Positive thinking is an attitude which uplifts good thoughts, images and language. It creates a thought process towards success, happiness and health. It enhances better sense of control and helps in surviving in severe situations. It helps in overcoming sudden, unexpected, negative and positive changes in life.What is self-talk??
Self-talk is the thoughts that keeps on popping up in your head on a regular basis. Definitely, some of your thoughts are meaningful and logical but some of the thoughts are negative and without any base. These thoughts are normal in our daily life. Something is going on your life and sudden thoughts come up in your mind related to that. Such thoughts are called Self-talks.
There are two types of self-talks as per the two types of thinking, that is, positive and negative. Negative self-talks is like if someone calls you stupid or fool, you'll think about it all the time and will lead you to a negative thought about yourself that you are actually a stupid or fool. Negative self-talks can be injurious as well. For example, a feeling of hurting someone. That takes you away from positive thinking. Whereas if you are having positive self-talks then you're already practicing positive thinking.How does self-talk effects your life?
Though all of us have self-talks but what creates the difference is the factor that what kind of self-talks do one possess more, positive or negative. Positive self-talks, no doubt, takes one towards positive paths whereas negative self-talks leads you to negative paths and other health related problems like depression and evil behavior. It has been proved by The National Mental Health Information Center that those children who possess negative self-talks from childhood carries the same kind of negative self-talk throughout their life. So, if your child is having a negative thoughts like the feeling that no one loves them, they are a fool, or if they have a feeling of hurting someone then that feeling will remain with them throughout their life taking them to a negative path of depression or crime.How much positive thinking is important?
Having positive thinking is a very important factor. Following points will help you understand why:
1.It helps in living a successful life.
2.A study conducted at Stanford University proved that positive thinking makes our mind respond quickly. Some positive and negative images were shown to some people and it was noted that their brain responded quickly to the positive images than to the negative ones.
3.It is also proved scientifically that positive thinking increases life span. The research at Pittsburgh School of Medicine proved that the postmenopausal women who were positive by attitude were having a decreased rate of death and were less prone to diabetes and hypertension. In fact positive thinking female were 30% less likely to die from heart diseases and the one with negative thinking are 23% more likely to die from cancer.
4.Positive thinking helps in working against depression. The one with negative thinking are more likely to suffer from depression whereas bringing positive thinking during the state of depression helps in getting out of the situation of depression. It decreases stress from our life.
5.Positive thinking even helps in enhancing the immune system. A 2003 study shows that positive thinking helps in curing common cold and other similar problems whereas negative thinking can make your brain respond less to flu vaccines. The study conducted by University of Wisconsin showed that negative emotions causes more electrical activities at the regions of brain which suppresses the immune response to flu virus, by counting the number of antibodies.
6.Having positive thinking helps in recovering quickly from surgeries and diseases like cancer, heart diseases etc.
7.Positive thinking also helps in prevents unusual gain in weight.
8.People with positive thinking usually have good behavior.
9.People with positive thinking usually have realistic expectations. They don't live in a dreamy world. They usually know the consequences of their decisions. Or you can say they have a better ability to decide and predict about their decisions.
10.People with positive thinking possess leadership qualities. They possess the quality to lead a small group of people or a big society.
11.People with positive thinking can help other people develop positive thinking. Attitude is like a communicable disease. It can easily transfer from one person to another. People have the feelings to improve themselves and be the best. So, by watching other people with the attitude they want develop in themselves always motivates them to be like that.
12.Positive thinking makes you stick to your decisions and reach your goals. For example, you want to lose weight but usually people don't follow their diet and exercise plans. Having a positive thinking would push you towards completing their task and achieving their goals.
13.Having positive thinking makes you happy.
14.And at last but not the least, positive thinking helps killing negative thinking.
Overall you can say positive thinking will only and only do good in your child's life, in every field, whether be health, work or family.How to develop positive thinking in children??
Now this is a challenge to all the parents; how to develop positive thinking in their children?? Since this is something that is not taught in school, therefore, it is important that these things should be taught at home. You just need to follow some steps:
1.First of all, if you want to develop positive thinking in your children then you first should develop positive thinking in yourself. Remember, you are the role model of your child. They'll be like what you are. Change your attitude from negative to positive and you'll see a sudden change in your child's behavior as well.
2.Love them. Show your love to them. This will make them feel that they are important and hence will develop positive attitude.
3.Stay calm and happy in front your children.Take decisions wisely. All these things will effect your children's thinking in a positive way.
4.Teach them to value themselves and other people. Tell them that they are very important. Teach them to care about themselves and about others. Teach them to be there for their friends and family, to help them when they need help. Teach them about doing and giving for others.
5.Teach them to judge people from their inner feelings and not by the looks, cloths or advanced gadgets. Tell them what is good and what is bad. Tell them to choose their friends by watching the unique character and not by watching how many video games do they have.
6.Make them learn gratitude from a young age.
7.Talk to them about the positive and negative things and discuss how to apply positive things in your life, when they'll grow a bit older.
8.Share your own experiences that shows your positive attitudes. As mentioned earlier, you are the role model of you child. So, your positive incidences will motivate them in working on the same way you did.
9.Ensure good company to your children. Check out their friends. And protect them from negative thinking people and children.
10.Try to build leadership qualities in them. A leader always possess discipline, energy, confidence, and courage. A leader takes interest in what they do and understand the feelings and problems of other people. Try to develop all these qualities in them. Tell them to perform every task with confidence and interest. Tell them to possess courage and have a soft heart as well to understand other people.
11.Note down if your child is having any kind of negative self-talks. Notice them and try to eliminate them.
12.Always praise them in their success, doesn't matters a big success or a small one. You should do this. It will help developing self confidence.
13.Good and healthy food along with exercises and yoga helps in having a calm and positive thinking.
14.Make them think rational. Like, some children says that "no one loves me" or "no one cares about me". Try to eliminate such irrational thoughts. Tell them that everybody loves them.
15.Try to involve them in such activities that they love to do. Whatever it be, cooking, playing or anything. To perform any such activity you need to have good thoughts in you then only you can succeed in that particular field. So, motivate them to excel in that field. This will automatically create the leadership qualities in them.
16.Try to figure out the positive points. For example, if your child says that "I don't want to go to school because no likes me there", say that "what if someone new will come today who'll like to play the same games you like to and be your best buddy. If you'll miss today's class, you could miss that opportunity." So try to show them the positive sides of every situations.
17.Tell them to enjoy each and every single moment of their life. Spend some good time with them. Engaging in good activities prevent various kinds of thought popping in your mind. Go for a walk together and gossip about the happenings. Go for picnic. So that will also help.
18.Take them to calm and quite natural places like some hills, sea shore, or any peaceful area near your home. Let them see good sights of nature for an hour or half an hour without saying a single word. This will enhance their love to nature plus make their mind peaceful.
19.Make them hope for the best. This will always help them boosting up their beliefs and expectations. Life is the game of expectations, so children should learn to expect somethings and work for that expected thing to achieve it.
20.Tell them to give their best in whatever they do. This will definitely give them a better results and they'll prefer to do things in the best way they can to get better results in future as well.
21.Watch positive thinking movies with your child. Read motivational and religious books for your child or let them read such books. Plus watch funny movies.
22.Let them play with colors, let them draw and paint. It is not needed for them to be an expert in painting but different colors also makes feel good. Playing around with colors and colorful clays is a good way.
23.Make them love plants and animals. Do gardening with them. If you don't have much of space then plant them in pots and teach them to care about those plants. If you have some pet at your home, make them feel that it's also alive and make them interact and take care of your pets.
24.Teach them to maintain hygiene. It's a very important part. Teach them to stay clean and keep your home clean. Clean environment always gives a good feeling.
25.Try to teach some things while performing any activity. For example, while watching the moon teach them why the moon changes shape, and teach them about such things in games. They'll understand their surroundings in a better way. This will create their interest in learning new things. Children prefer to listen than to read. Take out some time from your schedule and spend that time in improving and making their studies interesting. Learning together is useful at younger age.
26.Use the words "you can do it" in front of them. This will create confidence.
27.Teach them to do hard work as well as smart work. Sometimes hard work is not enough for success. Smart works help there. It saves time as well. So, motivate them for hard and smart works.
28.Make them realize the positive things in them, their good qualities.
29.Make them aware by the religious values and thoughts.Extra points for teenagers
Just like normal children, teenagers lacking positive thinking compares themselves with other and feels that they are not good as other teens. They lack communication skills and have the feeling of hopelessness.
1.In such conditions also you should work as a role model to your teen with full of positive attitude.
2.Build a good and friendly relationship with them like you have a relationship with younger children. Usually many differences occupies the space between the parent and the children during teenage. Don't let that happen.
3.Don't shout on them. A little bit of harshness is required but not very much.
4.Talk about sex education and sexually transmitted diseases so as to protect them from these problems plus they could transfer their knowledge to their friends.
5.Help them changing their way of thinking. Usually during teenage a lots of changes occurs and change in thinking is one of them. They try to behave like adults. So teach them what's right for them and focus on the positive thoughts.
6.Encourage your teen to accept the responsibility of their actions. It will help creating the feeling of responsibility.Things you shouldn't do....
1.Never fight. Always try to create a stress free environment at your home. People think that all the fights and stress at home doesn't affects their child's mind as they are too young to understand. This is not true. Children understands the emotions very well and if they'll see and experience negativity around them, they'll be like that only. Avoid negative statements, anger, fights at your home. All these things will make them using all these things in their daily life. They will feel that fighting and shouting is the correct way to handle the situation. Hence, will follow the same.
2.Never criticize them in front of everybody. This will make them feel useless and neglected. And I'm sure you don't want that to happen.
3.Never beat them up.
4.Never pretend in front your children of having a false attitude. Children can judge very well what is true and what is false, so never try to be something that is not you. They will point you out. And let me inform you that children too hate to be lied, just like we all do.
5.Avoid movies that contains a lot of adult or sexual content.
6.Avoid talking a lot about money in front of them. Effects of negative thinking
People with negative thinking are more likely to suffer from depression and other mental problems like anxiety, hypertension, obsessive-compulsive disorder etc. They easily gains weight as well. They don't possess the quality to handle a disturbing situation. Plus negative thinking may trigger criminal behaviors in your child. So, note all the points and behavior before it's too late. Don't avoid such things by saying that "my child can't be like this."Misconception
People think that positive thinking means being happy. It's not so. Simply laughing at all the situations is not the solution and it's not called having a positive thinking. You can say that the person is having a positive thinking if they handle severe situations smartly and intelligently. By "intelligently" I mean in a proper and beneficial way.
Signing off now. But remember, as children grows up, they built their own belief system based on what they have seen and been taught. So, make sure that what they are learning from you is rich in values and positive thinking. The basic believes never changes throughout the life. So, make sure that those basic believes are good and positive. Make them involve in good things, such good things will provoke good thoughts and feelings.