Martin E.P. Seligman (1942- ) was an American psychologist who received the American Society of Applied and Preventive Psychology Medal of Honor, lifetime achievement award, and was elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1998.
Let's go back to the basic theory first. When we fail, we all feel helpless or depressed for a while. We don't take the initiative to do something like we used to, and even if we do it reluctantly, it may not last.
Optimistic people can quickly recover from this brief state of helplessness. For them, defeat is only a challenge, an obstacle on the way to victory. They see setbacks as temporary, specific.
Pessimistic people indulge in failure because they see failure as permanent and universal. They become depressed and remain helpless.
A small setback seems to them to be a big failure, and a local failure is thought to be a complete loss, and they first put up a white flag and surrender. It may take weeks or even months for them to recover, and with a little setback, they will go into the abyss of helplessness.
This theory predicts very clearly that in the classroom, on the sports field, smart people don't necessarily succeed. Success belongs to people who are smart enough and optimistic.
01
A pessimistic style of explanation can make bad grades a habit
Is this prediction correct? When your child is not doing well in school, it is easy for a teacher or parent to make a wrong judgment that the child is not smart enough, or even stupid.
Your child may become depressed, and this state will make him not try his best, not to persevere, so that he does not dare to risk reaching the upper limit of his potential.
Worse, if you think stupidity or not being smart enough is the cause of his bad grades, your child will incorporate your thoughts into his perception of himself, his explanations will get worse and worse, and his bad grades will slowly become a habit.
The pessimistic style of interpretation is very unfavorable to children. If your child is in third grade and the score of the Child Attribution Style Questionnaire shows that he is pessimistic, then he has a good chance of depression later on.
For example:
That winter in Cindy's third grade, her parents separated and her father moved out. Before this incident, her style of explanation was a little more pessimistic than average, and she was now listless, washing her face with tears all day.
Her homework plummeted, and she began to shrink like a depressed child, no longer associated with friends. Then she began to think of herself as unloved and stupid, and this thought made her style of interpretation more pessimistic.
It's important to be a parent to be aware that your child is caught in this vicious circle and to teach your child to break it.
02
Parental divorce is most likely to make children pessimistic
Optimistic children are more able to resist unfortunate encounters than pessimistic children, and well-connected children are more resistant than children with poor interpersonal relationships, but this does not guarantee that these children will not be affected by these unfortunate encounters and become depressed.
Here are some unfortunate incidents that we should be wary of in advance, and if these happen, you should give your child some help and support as much as possible.
The older brother or sister went on a long trip to college or for employment.
Pets die. You may think it's a trivial matter, but it hits kids very hard.
Grandparents who were close to their children died.
Parents quarrel.
Parents divorced or separated. This one is the most lethal.
Because divorce and parental discord are the most likely and most common events to cause depression in children, long-term research at Princeton Penn University has focused specifically on children who have experienced this experience.
When we started the study, about 60 children (about 15 percent) told us that their parents were divorced or separated.
We've looked at these kids over the past three years and compared them to other kids. Our findings illustrate the implications behind this social phenomenon and give you an idea of how to appease your children in the unlikely event of a divorce.
First and foremost, your child will be very hurt.
We tested children twice a year and found that these children were far more depressed than children in happy families. We had expected this gap to narrow over time, but this was not the case.
Three years later, the children of these divorced families are still much more depressed than the others. The children of these divorced families are more sad, less disciplined in class, less enthusiastic, have low self-evaluation, often have some minor problems in their bodies, and they are more worried.
It is important to note that not all children in divorced families become depressed, and some children recover quickly. So, in general, divorce doesn't make the child depressed for the rest of his life, divorce just makes the child more likely to become depressed.
Many unfortunate encounters continue to occur to children of divorced families.
These constant misfortunes can be the cause of depression for children of divorced families. These events can be divided into three categories, the first of which is caused by divorce, or because of depression caused by divorce.
Most of the following things happen to children of divorced families.
Their mom started going outside to work.
Their classmates became unfriendly.
Parents remarry.
Parents are hospitalized.
Your child fails the test.
Children of divorced families may also experience more incidents that trigger parental divorce.
Parents often quarrel.
Parents travel frequently.
The father or mother is unemployed.
The world of the children of these divorced families is dark and bleak. They have depression that they can't get rid of, a much higher percentage of them studying halfway than others, and many seemingly unrelated unfortunate events
Fall on their heads.
If you're thinking about a divorce, I have to remind you of these grim statistics, and I have a responsibility to tell you these facts.
The root of the problem may not be in the divorce, but in the quarrel between the parents.
It has been said that it is better for two unhappy parents to divorce than to have the child live with two mutually hateful parents, but our research shows that this is not the case.
In our study, 75 parents were not divorced, but had a lot of quarrels. The children of these families look as bad as the children of divorced families, they are depressed, and their depression lasts long after their parents stop arguing, while also suffering more unfortunate events than other children.
Parental quarrels can cause lasting harm to their children in two ways:
One is that the parents have long been dissatisfied with each other, quarreled, and then separated. These quarrels and separations directly harass the child and cause long-term depression.
The second possibility is that the parents of the quarrel are a very unhappy couple, and although the quarrel and separation do not directly affect the child, the child can feel that the parents are very unhappy, and this feeling seriously affects the child and causes him long-term depression. Our data cannot show which theory is correct.
Many people are not happily married, they no longer love each other after a few years of marriage, but they are worried about the happiness of their children and barely maintain the marriage.
If parental quarrels and separations are the cause of a child's depression, and you put your child's interests rather than your own satisfaction first, I would give you very different advice: Are you willing to give up separation? Or the tougher challenge – are you willing to restrain yourself from arguing?
I'm not naïve enough to advise you to never quarrel. Quarrels are also useful sometimes, but a lot of fights in marriages don't pay off anything.
I can't tell you how to argue with a gainful fight, all I know is how to solve the problem by arguing. If the child sees the adult arguing and reaches an agreement, with a clear result, the child will not be so shocked and uneasy.
This means that when you quarrel, you should try your best to solve the cause of the quarrel and let him see in front of the child that the quarrel has been clearly achieved.
03
If you want to learn well, it is not enough to be smart
For the past 100 years, competence and talent have been considered the key to academic success. I think tradition values talent too much, and these so-called talents don't have an accurate measurement method, and it's not a good indicator of future success, and this traditional view is simply wrong.
The traditional view completely ignores an important factor, namely the style of interpretation. It can be said that success also explains style, and failure also explains style.
Which one came first? Optimistic or good grades? Common sense tells us that a talented person is optimistic because he is talented. But our research clearly reflects the opposite causal relationship.
In our study, we kept the so-called "talents" like SAT scores, IQ, life insurance clerk qualification tests, and then looked at the difference between optimists and pessimists in these high-talented groups. We have repeatedly found that optimists perform beyond their potential, while pessimists perform below their potential.
I think that the so-called potential, without an optimistic definition, is meaningless.
Seligman's optimistic motto:
★ Pessimistic interpretation styles and unfortunate encounters are important factors that induce depression in children.
★ Parental divorce or frequent quarrels are the most likely events to trigger depression in children, and many unfortunate encounters can occur continuously with children in divorced families.
★ Without optimism, ingenuity in the traditional sense means little to success.
Source: U.S.-China Science and Education
Image source: DE Future Bootcamp
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