optimistic kids
The importance of optimism is drummed into us from an early age. “Look on the bright side,” people say. “Be a glass-half-full person!” “Stop being such a whingey little sad sack!” (You can thank my older brother for that one.) Yet people rarely stop to ask, well, what exactly are we hoping for when we feed our children these messages? Is optimism a prerequisite for lifelong happiness? And if we’re trying so hard to build a sense of optimism in our kids, then why are childhood depression and anxiety at such epidemic rates?
On at least one point, the science is clear: young children are natural-born optimists. “Kids have what we call a ‘positivity bias’,” explains Dr Janet Boseovski, a researcher in early childhood psychology with the University of North Carolina. They can be complex thinkers when it comes to making purely analytical judgements about the world—deducing, for example, that a doctor knows
