Optimism for Preschool-Aged Children

Optimism helps children embrace challenges and grow, but it’s important to balance it with a realistic sense of risk. Guide your child to see feelings and setbacks as temporary, fostering resilience and growth.

Key Concepts:

• Optimism: the idea that failure is temporary and changeable. This relates to growth mindset! Optimism can contribute to a child’s willingness and fearlessness towards learning, taking on challenges, and trying new experiences. Plus overall happiness and satisfaction in life.
• Optimism can also be challenging, making children more likely to underestimate risk in dangerous situations (crossing the street). Their rosy outlook on life can make them poor judges of risk.
• During the preschool and elementary years, children’s foundation of optimistic or pessimistic thoughts are forming. By adolescence, their sense of the world will be solidified.
• Children with difficult temperaments are more likely to form pessimistic world views as adults - but this link is mitigated when parents and children have a supportive relationship with a strong "goodness of fit".

What to Try:

• Talk about feelings like the weather. “Feelings come and go, just like the clouds in the sky.” This promotes the idea that situations and feelings are only temporary.
• Model for your child how you understand your own beliefs. For example, “I wonder why I got so angry when you wouldn’t brush your teeth when I asked. Maybe because I was saying to myself, I am going to be late getting to bed because Madelyn won’t brush her teeth and doesn’t hear me talking. That is frustrating to me.” This supports perspective taking and helps children to have an accurate appraisal of people and their actions.
• Attempt to target pessimistic thoughts with evidence. If your child says “I’m not good at riding a two-wheeler,” you can say “You’re not supposed to be good at that yet! You just got your first bike. We can keep practicing.”
• Make your praise genuine and moderate, focused on individual growth and commitment (NOT results). “Wow! Look at how tall you made your tower. It’s so sturdy this time.” Avoid false praise (such as, “you built that all by yourself” when you helped a ton).