I found this book very helpful in understanding what does on the mind of kids and how to give them positive reinforcement while also being honest. Dr. Seligman's rich examples derived from other institutions across the world provide a great example of what we could be doing in the USA that we don't. I've tried to apply much of what I read to how I coach and raise my own kids and seen very positive results. It's been very helpful though at times difficult to implement. Overall, I really feel that being honest and truthful with kids when they fail yet still providing encouragement is the best way forward as Seligman notes. We have to be honest and open with kids when they fail and why. I appreciate his work and dedication to extending his work around optimism to children and how to see more of this across schools in this country.

A key takeaway from the book is the significant impact of our words during moments of discipline. Instead of saying, "Why are you always like this?" when frustrated, Seligman suggests a more constructive approach: "You are really smart and caring, but what happened today? Are you feeling down?" This kind of language fosters open communication and encourages children to reflect on their feelings, steering them toward a more optimistic outlook.

Additionally, it's important to take your time with the book. Instead of reading it all at once, approach it slowly and follow the guidelines step by step. Engaging with your child during this process can make a meaningful difference, allowing you to implement the strategies together.

Overall, "The Optimistic Child" serves as a valuable resource for parents, teachers, and mentors, offering insights that can profoundly influence a child's mindset and future. It's an inspiring read that encourages a positive difference in a child's life!

4.5⭐️

i just reread this book b/c it has been so long. i really like his ideas. implementing is going to be rather difficult due to age (for now) as well as the depth and length of each theory. his methods of experimentation seemed reasonable, however the longitudinal studies seem rather scattered. i suppose that rather normal.
anyway, it has helped my own pessimistic brain see a flip side of thinking, which is probably the BEST thing you can do for your kids...set a good example. hopefully it will rub off. :)

I'm on a parenting book kick right now...I highly recommend this book. It's premise: that it is never too early to start teaching your child resilience and a positive outlook. His critical point -- that too many parents focus on boosting their children's self-esteem through unearned praise. Instead, Seligman suggests, parents should be encouraging their child to earn praise through hard work, acquiring useful skills, and persevering. Pride is the key to optimism, he argues, not being told you can do no wrong. An excellent, scholarly book on parenting.

This book may not be so helpful if you have very young children but is definitely worth the read if you have tweens or teens. Seligman clearly marks the differences between seeing the glass half empty and the one half full. This book not only contains a lot of research data but also a ton of valuable concrete examples of what children can go through and how they handle it. Seligman shows what a parent should or shouldn't say in some situations, and provides a lot of tools to help children become more optimistic than pessimistic. His 5-step problem solving process works for adults too, clearly explaining how to identify a bad event as temporary rather than permanent, take a fresh perspective, set new goals and a plan of action for the future. I definitely recommend this book if you're interested in the subject for yourself or your kids.

I like his theory and feel like he gave good practical ideas on how to help children avoid depression and anxiety. Mental health is so important and so neglected and stigmatized. I skimmed several chapters but it was worth a read and I could see myself pulling this one back out again for a refresher.

ANOTHER AWESOME BOOK BY MARTIN SELIGMAN. Man. This book discusses different ways on how children view the world positively or negatively. He states that there are early indicators if a child is going to be depressed. He uses different questionnaires and has done different studies with a population that shows people how to improve children's optimism. Some of these interventions include realizing how a child interprets certain events in their lives, how to criticize your child, how to teach your child to be like sherlock holmes (arguing with themselves by learning how to accurately dispute their negative thoughts). This book teaches the ABCDE model as well, but for children! It gives the parents strategies on how to introduce disputing these negative thoughts to your child because if your child sees you accurately dispute your negative thoughts, they will do so also. This book gives different games you can play with your child to help them fight back against pessimistic thoughts (the brain game) and how to recognize the difference between "hot thoughts" and "cold thoughts" which thoughts would make us angry versus thoughts that help us "cool down." This game is called "The Hot Seat." I would recommend this book to parents or anyone that works or is around children!

Happy I read this so I can begin implementing strategies to help my daughter become and remain optimistic throughout her life. This is helpful for her and a good practice for me (as well). I shared this book with several parents I know. “Optimism isn’t about cheerful slogans or wishful thinking. Instead, useful optimism means taking accurate responsibility for your actions and persevering through setbacks. You can help your children become more optimistic by teaching them to see their challenges as temporary and specific rather than permanent and all-consuming. 

Actionable advice:

Help your child master the world.

The feeling of mastering a skill or task is an important part of optimism and self-esteem. You can start fostering this feeling in young children with something as simple as shopping. The next time you go to a store, let your child choose and pay for three items himself, and put the items into his own little bag. Small activities like this will give your child the sense that he has the ability to influence his world and make things happen.”

The Optimistic Child lays out Martin Seligman's programme to "innoculate" children against depression, by using cognitive and behavioral techniques to develop in them a sense of optimism and personal mastery. Seligman criticises the approach of the self-esteem movement as wrong-headed and flawed; self-esteem is a combination of doing well AND feeling good. But the contemporary focus on telling children that they are unique, special and awesome in all they do (even if the results suggest the opposite) merely focusses on feeling good (the end), ignoring the part about doing well (the means). He argues that the increasing rates of depression in the US stem from its shift from being "an achieving society to a feel-good society…the feel-good society, as it overtook the doing well society, created new opportunities and new freedoms along with new perils (i.e. the greater risk for depression that these new opportunities bring)."

Seligman dismisses traditional definitions of optimism centred around positive thinking as manifestations of optimism; instead, the basis of optimism lies in the way one thinks about causes, in one's "explanatory style". There are three facets to one's explanatory style:
t- permanence (permanent causes vs temporary causes): does a child think of their failures, rejections in terms of "always" and "never", or "sometimes" and "lately"? Conversely, does a child believe that good events have permanent causes rather than temporary ones?
t- Pervasiveness (specific vs global): does a child see the cause as specific (e.g. this particular teacher was hard on them, they performed worse on a particular task compared to others) or global (all teachers are unfair, they are losers and suck at everything)
t- Personal (internal vs external): does a child blame themself primarily or can they blame other people or circumstances. This is not to say we should teach children to be external about bad events. Rather, children need to be discerning and not blame themselves whenever things go wrong whether it is their fault or not. They need to learn "how to see themselves accurately, so that when problems are their fault, they take responsibility and try to correct their behaviour, whereas when the problem is not their fault, they still feel worthwhile"

Parents shape their kids' explanatory style in the way they criticize their kids, and also in the way they themselves respond to challenges and failures. Do you criticize accurately, or take on more self-blame than warranted? Do you criticize with an optimistic or pessimistic explanatory style? Seligman suggests that "a single, crucial event…can markedly alter pessimism or optimism by changing the child's theory of who he is and what he is worth." He describes it as the "Hoving effect", after Thomas Hoving, the former curator of MoMA, based on this brilliant anecdote of Hoving: Hoving was 19 at Princeton University, "flunking out, anxious, low of self-esteem, and unsure of judgement." But before dropping out, he decided to take an upperclass sculpture seminar. On the first day, the professor placed on the podium a gleaming metal object with streamlined fingers and asked the 8 students to comment on the aesthetic merits of the piece. An Ivy Club senior said "mellifluous fluidity", a junior described it as "harmony of the spheres" and so on until Hoving, who said it was "too well tooled, too mechanical, too cold, and too streamlined, It's too functional. This isn't art." It turns out it was an obstetrical speculum and Hoving said "after that, there was no stopping me!"

Part Four gets into the meat of the book - How To Raise Children to Optimism and Mastery - where Seligman describes the approaches he and his team took in the 1990 launch of the Penn Prevention Programme:
t- The ABC model: ABC stands for Adversity, Beliefs and Consequences and Seligman includes some exercises to build awareness of how our beliefs have profound influence on the consequences/outcomes of a problem. If we can learn to "catch" our beliefs aand internal dialogue and reframe them, we can change how we respond to the situation.
t- Teaching kids to understand the different facets that shape one's explanatory style and to differentiate between permanent/temporary, specific/global, internal/external and consider the accuracy of their beliefs in this context
t- Teaching kids to gather evidence to effectively dispute their (flawed) beliefs, generate alternatives to view the adversity, "decatastrophise" or accurately evaluate the implications of the adversity, and finally to develop a plan of attack to tackle the adversity (e.g. correct the mistake, improve the situation, control the damage). This takes practice so kids can learn to respond rapidly and effectively to the negative talk in their head. (Adversity - Beliefs - Consequence - Disputation - Energization)
t- Boosting kids' social skills: kids with good social and problem solving skills make new friends, are comfortable in new situations, maintain friends, cooperate and are therefore set up better to succeed. This entails being assertive and being able to articulate what they want clearly, being able to negotiate and compromise (figure out what you want, so long as it is reasonable and also listen to what the other person wants, then work out a compromise)
t- Boosting kids' problem solving skills: Slowing Down; Perspective Taking; Goal Settting (what outcome do you want); Choosing a Path

The Optimistic Child pulls together resources for parents - the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ) to assess a child's optimism, the Depression Child (CES-DC) test to get a sensing if one's child might be depressed, questionnaires to assess a child's problem solving and social skills - to assess their children's proclivity for depression and offers exercises to help build up emotional resilience and "innoculate" them against depression. Overall, it's a useful book and my only complaint is that the examples are understandably very American and would need to be rejigged for other cultural contexts.

Like all psychology books that appeal to me, this book cited real research, had a self-help angle, and wasn't dry reading. I very much liked the author's step-by-step ways to challenge pessimism, so much so that I'll probably look into his other book Learned Optimism. But this book was specifically written for parents with exercises and stories that we're supposed to do with our kids. He tested them out on a group of school kids as part of his research, and while I'm sure they were successful in that venue, I didn't have much success trying to do them with my kids. He said they were made to be "fun," but my middle kid certainly didn't think so. Oldest liked it a little better, but I read to him from the book only once. With all the other daily jobs of parenting, I just can't see doing these exercises in any sort of consistent way. I guess I'll have to write my own "optimistic" stories, tailor-made for my kids.

I have read many parenting books and there are very few that I recommend - but this will certainly be one of them.

The information and approaches detailed in this book have been developed from extensive research rather than self-nominated 'expert parenting' advice and it shows. Also, the care that Seligman and his colleagues have for the wellbeing of young adults shines through.

The book soundly describes and breaks down the key features of different thinking styles and their potential influence on wellbeing. It then moves on to specific (age-appropriate) exercises that demonstrate how one can engage with a child to help shift flawed thinking patterns to build a more optimistic and resilient approach (as well as inadvertently heading the other way).

In my view it reads well as a companion to "Feeling Good" by David Burns MD.

In this book, the author explains what optimism really is and what is not. It is not perceiving a glass as half full instead of half empty and it is not an attitude of "Every day things get better and better", it is instead a matter of critically evaluating one's look at the world. The author provides very valuable techniques that all parents should keep in mind on a daily basis - things most people do not ever think about but can have a lasting impression on how your children interpret the world and react to potentially traumatic situations.