As a therapist who specializes in working with kids, teens, parents, and families, I have noticed a growing and very concerning trend in my work. So many of the kids, teens, and even young adults that I work with are struggling with anxiety, crippling perfectionism, and so much self doubt that they struggle to do things they desperately want to be doing. At the root of so much of this are feelings of incompetence and a huge fear of failure. 
 
I have been contemplating this challenge and recent parenting trends and have noticed that this happens more in the families I work with where parents seem to be struggling to let their kids deal with things on their own. Unfortunately, these parents get kind of a bad rap as “helicopter” parents when in fact, they are parents who are simply struggling to know when it is appropriate to let their kid/teen/young adult fail or struggle through something. And the root of this struggle is usually so much love for their little one (who may not be so little anymore) as well as overwhelming fear about what might happen for their kid/teen/young adult if they do not participate so heavily in their lives. 
 
This fear is one most parents know well. What if they don’t get into a good college?  What if they make choices that screw up their whole life? What if they do something I can’t help them undo?  What if they can’t get a good job? And the list just goes on and on. As a result (I believe), we are overdoing it in the parenting department. We are rescuing our kids way too much and then we come to find that our kids seem to need to be rescued.  Weird huh. 
 
When you look at what happens and what a person will think if they are being rescued from situations, it starts to make sense. When we rescue a person from a situation that they are either capable of handling on their own or almost capable of handling on their own, the message we are giving them is not one of their own ability but one of their need for us to handle things for them. We teach them that they need us and that they can’t do these things on their own. We teach them to ask for help before they need it, before problem solving on their own, and to at all costs avoid struggling with something. 
 
Instead, we need to give our kids the following kinds of messages by verbalizing them as well as by our actions in letting them handle most problems on their own: 
 

• “I know you are struggling but you are also resourceful and able to figure things out on your own”
• “I’m here to help but I can’t solve this problem for you”
• “I have faith that you can figure this out” 
• “No matter what happens, we will figure this out together but you need to take some steps at solving the problem first”
• “I know it’s hard, but you can do hard things” 

 
I could go on and on but I won’t. The point is that we definitely need to help when it is needed. But we are so often confused about when it is needed that we are rescuing way too often, which is not helping our kids/teens/young adults develop into the independent and capable people that we know they are meant to be.  I encourage you to trust yourself as a parent and trust your “little one,” however old they may be, that they can figure things out and will benefit from a little struggle and failure along the way. Just like most of us did on our way to becoming independent adults. 
 

 I know, I know, as a therapist I am supposed to be all about positive thinking. For a while, I even tried out the whole “positive thinking” thing and would just try to wash away my so-called negative thoughts with positive ones. It was certainly appealing to think that if I just think “positive,” I would feel better! Honestly, it did not work so well for me and I notice in my work with people that it often leads to people feeling worse. I’m sure many of you have had this experience too, where you are talking about something difficult in your life and someone says something like, “it’ll be okay, just think positive” or another offender, “it could always be worse, or that sounds like a first world problem.” How do you end up feeling after that kind of comment? Often, invalidated, judged, and like you are totally misunderstood. Or, you might then start trying to think positive and not be able to do it (because you are a person and feelings are a natural part of life but more on that later), and then you judge yourself for not being able to be a “better, more positive person.” Somehow we have begun deeming thinking only positive thoughts and feeling only positive feelings as a goal or judgment of our worth as a person in our society. 
 
What I find to be really interesting is how often this message of “I should just think positive” comes into my therapy sessions with clients of all ages. This focus on “positivity” tells me a lot about our current culture and thoughts about coping and mental health. Unfortunately while I think positive thinking culture and the people who advocate for it mean very well, I think the message that “if we can just think positive, everything will go away and we'll feel great” is a real problem. This message tells us that unpleasant things, emotions, situations, or thoughts essentially just need to be suffocated with positivity and to go away. Some of you may wonder why that is a problem.  Shouldn’t unpleasant things just go away? I would say no, they should not just go away at all for many reasons. 
 
6 Reasons Why Positive Thinking Can be a Problem: 
 
1.   It is not realistic: 
It is not possible to be positive all the time because that would mean that we avoid feelings we deem to be “negative.”  However, ALL feelings are important, valuable, and necessary in life (even the uncomfortable and downright unpleasant ones). Our emotions are essential cues to our environments and we need all of them, even the ones we would rather avoid like shame, dread, jealousy, fear, or insecurity. 
 
2.   Avoiding unpleasant emotions does not make them go away:
Unfortunately, our emotions do not just go away because we avoid them or ignore them. They tend to build up inside and fester and grow, becoming more challenging to deal with in the long run, though this may feel good temporarily. The analogy I like to use is of a soda bottle being shaken up, that is exactly what it is like when we hold in unpleasant emotions, at some point they will come out or we will need to do more and more to keep our semblance of control over them. Unfortunately, this can lead to even more unhealthy coping patterns such as addictions, self-injury, or damage in our relationships. 

3.   Positive thinking can lead to denial of our challenges:
If we think that we are only supposed to think and feel positive things, we might glaze over the challenges we have had in our lives. This means that we would be less likely to share our struggles, integrate them into who we are now, and truly live authentic lives with meaningful connections with others. I believe that connecting with others in a meaningful, authentic, genuine way is not possible if we do not know how to discuss our challenges. This one actually leads right into my next reason… 
 
4.   If we avoid thinking deeply about our challenges we will also avoid getting to a place of learning from our challenges
As I mentioned above, not thinking about our struggles can lead to less authentic connections with others but it can also lead to less authentic connections with ourselves where we simply try to avoid the parts of ourselves or our lives that have been less than great. As a therapist, I believe that the most important thing we can do is to look at our struggles and challenges in detail to learn from them and understand ourselves better. If we just glaze over challenges though, this learning becomes impossible and we might even keep repeating unhealthy patterns or relationships in our lives. 
 
5.   It perpetuates our happiness, or problem free life infatuation
I notice that our culture seems to encourage an almost infatuation with “happiness” or not having problems. I think this is fascinating because I am of the belief that suffering and problems are inherent in being human. We are going to struggle but we are also going to have some amazing successes and you most likely can’t have one without the other. Positive thinking seems to tell you that if you just thought positively, everything in your life would be positive and you would have no problems or struggles at all. You would just be happy all the time. 
 
The challenge is that happiness is not meant to be an ongoing, persistent feeling. Happiness, like all other emotions is a temporary state. All emotions are temporary the lovely ones, the not so lovely ones, and everything in between. Who wants to spend their life feeling jealous, insecure, shame, or guilt. No one. However, without the darker side of emotions we really wouldn't have capacity for the more pleasant ones. They are flipsides of the same coin and we really do need them both. 

6.   It perpetuates the stigma of mental illness
As a therapist, this is one of the most concerning effects of the positive thinking movement, that somehow depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive behaviors could somehow just be fixed by “positive thinking.” This grossly oversimplifies what people truly need to do to help themselves recover or manage these challenges and suggests that we can just magically think them away. As a therapist who witnesses the challenges of somebody with significant symptoms of any kind I find this to be deeply disturbing as well as deeply offensive.
 
In sum, while I do recognize some benefits of having a positive mindset (I’ll talk more about these in my next blog in this series), I believe that the incredible push towards only positive thinking has a lot of drawbacks and negative consequences in our ability to manage, cope with, and tolerate “negative” thoughts and feelings. 
 
I'd like to propose something different and what I believe to be more effective actually. Realistic thinking. This is thinking that lives in the middle of completely negative thinking and completely positive thinking. Check out more in my next blog in this series where I discuss what Realistic Thinking looks like! 
 
If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. 
 
As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio.  
 
To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n.

The concepts of resilience and grit have been hot topics recently, particularly in the parenting, education, and psychology fields. This is for good reason as these qualities have been shown to be some of the most important traits you can help your child/teen develop in order to become successful adults. Interestingly, these are also traits that many adults are noticing seem to be lacking in some of the younger generations, which is a concern being written about all over the place online it seems. 
 
These hot topic concepts also come up often in my office frequently, particularly when parents begin to recognize that these are character traits that their children, teens, or young adults seem to lack. I hear comments and concerns from parents due to their children or teens not being able to persist or manage their frustration during difficult tasks. Sometimes, it shows up in their inability to make decisions and follow through on them because they are fearful of their ability to manage a possible “wrong” decision. 
 
I thought it could be helpful to write a blog with my tips for ways parents can help their children build resilience and grit from a young age to help prevent some of these challenges. As a psychologist who specializes in treating individuals across the lifespan and in working with parents, I believe that I have a unique perspective on how this trait may develop in small ways over a life. 
 
Before we get into this topic too much, it might help to give some background on these concepts. 
 
Resilience
I love the way resilience is described in this article on the American Psychological Association’s website – “Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress… It means "bouncing back" from difficult experiences.” (You can find the original article and related information on resilience here).
 
Grit
As described by Angela Duckworth in her TED talk on grit (Check it out here!), grit is “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” 
 
I believe the most important thing to know about resilience and grit is that they are character traits that can be developed and are not innate things that we either have or don’t have. These traits result from conscious choices about how we cope with the world and how we handle the adversity that we will inevitably face in our lives. 
 
Hopefully these brief descriptions help you see just how important these traits are. Resilience is essentially the ability to continue when life is difficult and to overcome failure and Grit is the tendency to persist when the road to overcome failure becomes tough. 
 
6 Ways to help your child develop resilience and grit: 
 
1.  Expect that life will have challenges
I love that parents want to raise their children with the mindset that things will go well for them. I totally can relate to wanting to have things be smooth for your child – it is really tough to watch your child struggle! However, this idea that things will go well and that problems are the anomaly is unfortunately completely inaccurate and misguided. Challenges in life are the norm and should be expected. Therefore, we as parents can do our best job for our kids by preparing them for challenges and how to use them as learning experiences! 
 
I think normalizing challenge and struggle for your children is important and you can do that in many ways. For example saying something like, “I know that is tough, sometimes things in life will be tough for us, but we can handle it” or “Life can be really unfair and difficult sometimes, I think this is one of those times, but I know we can get through it together.” Another way you can do this is by sharing some of your own challenges with them. For example, if your child is struggling in a friendship, you can say something about how you remember what that was like for you as a child and the ways you learned to deal with the feelings you had. This will help them know they are not alone and that they are not the only ones dealing with a difficulty. 
 
2.  Allow them to experience failure
This is absolutely crucial!  I hear from parents all the time just how much they want their kids to be happy and to succeed. However, they often mistakenly help their kids avoid failure too much and prevent them from the learning opportunities that come with failing. This can give them the message that they are not capable to dealing with or surviving challenges. 
 
I would even take this one step further and suggest that you as a parent embrace failure. Failure means so many wonderful things – it means that you tried something new that was outside of your comfort zone, it means you pushed yourself and found your limit with something, failure means that you were brave. We often have a negative perception of failure in our culture and I would encourage us to reconsider this, especially as parents!  Failure is not the worst thing by any means, it is a step on your path and a learning opportunity. (Check out my longer blog post on this very topic here).
 
3.  Let your kids make decisions and deal with the outcomes
Let’s say that your child is debating about what sport they want to play or what class they want to take in school. You know that the one they are choosing may not be entirely the best fit for them but they really want to try it. I would recommend you let them make the decision and then deal with how it turns out. Maybe they love it – great, they now made a decision that worked out for them and that’s a great learning experience!  Maybe they hate it – great, now they have made a decision that they can learn so much from. The best part of them hating it is that you can then work with them on how they deal with a difficult class, teacher, sport, etc. for the duration of the semester, season, etc. 
 
Another example would be for a younger child when they choose ice cream at the ice cream shop you are pretty sure they will hate. Let them choose and then don’t rescue them from the outcome. Everything in life is there to teach us something so help them find the lesson there!  
 
4.  Don’t rescue too much or too quickly
When your child is struggling with something, try not to just jump in and either do it for them, fix the problem, or correct their mistake. Try to figure out exactly where their skill level is for dealing with that situation and then support them through scaffolding, expecting them to push themselves a little bit beyond their existing skill level to deal with it. For example, when your child is completing a puzzle and feels that it is too hard, push them to work for a few more minutes before you come to help. When you come over to help, don’t just do it for them or point out where the pieces go, talk them through their process of decision making and give little suggestions that will help them figure it out on their own. 
 
The most important thing is that if you as a parent view challenges as opportunities to learn, your child will too! 
 
5.  Teach your kids to persist through challenges 
So when a challenging situation comes up, model for them how to deal with it in a healthy, persistent way. It helps if you have a positive attitude about life’s challenges also!
 
Our language around challenges really matters in these situations – here are some examples of ways to talk positively about challenges: 

• “Oh this is tough, what a great way to learn!”
• “I love a challenge”
• “Mistakes and challenges help our brain grow”
• “Let’s try to look at this another way”
• “It’s important that we keep trying rather than giving up”
• “I think we can figure this out together” 
• “I know it’s tough but we can do hard things” 

 
6.  Be comfortable with your own struggle and failures 
If you can feel comfortable with the fact that things will not always go our way in life, you will inevitably pass that message on to your child. If you expect perfection or things to go smoothly, you will pass that on to your child too. So, I think it is important that you think about your relationship with adversity while you think about how to help your child through it. If you notice that you struggle with your own failures or with being resilient or having grit, perhaps it would be a good time to work on that in yourself while you work on it with your child!  
 
Some great resources for developing more grit and resilience for yourself as an adult: 

• Brene Brown’s work – All of her books are amazing but Rising Strong speaks to this the most 
• Angela Duckworth – Her Ted Talk or book, Grit would be a great place to start!
• Researching information on Growth Mindset – there are a ton of resources online!
• Pema Chodron’s work and books 
• ​Sheryl Sandberg's book Option B has a great discussion on building resilience 
  

 
I hope that this list can be a jumping off point for you in learning how to help your child overcome adversity to develop more grit and resilience! If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304. 
 
As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio.  
 
To stay in the loop on the services offered and to receive updated information about Thrive, please feel free to sign up for the newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n.
 

I think my best tip for parents on how to best survive, and hopefully thrive, during the holiday season is to manage expectations. So often, we can get so caught up in all of the "shoulds" of the holidays. We should go ice skating, make cookies, have the perfectly decorated home, buy gifts that are just perfect for everyone on our lists, see holiday lights, visit family, etc, etc, etc. The list really could just go on and on!  

I also notice that there is even more pressure on parents to do all. the. things. now that social media is so prevalent in our lives. We see other people posting their perfectly decorated cookies or homes and we start comparing and feeling that we need to do things that way also in order to have the perfect holiday for our kids. Or we see pictures of all the activities people are doing for the holidays and start feeling that we need to do the same. 

All of this combined with our drive to be the best parents we can be creates the perfect storm of expectations and stress. Interestingly, the things we are focused on and stressing about may not even be important to us or our families. Instead of trying to do everything this year, I encourage you to take the time to ask your family members one thing they would really like to include in your holiday season this year and then make your list of "to do" based on that. With all the rest of the time perhaps you can try to just enjoy yourself and even create some time to relax and create new traditions!

As always, we at Thrive hope that our blogs are helpful to you.If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy with one of us, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304.
 
If you would like to receive updated information about Thrive Therapy, please feel free to sign up for our newsletter through the following link: http://eepurl.com/cvGx5n.