Wellbeing 

Helping your child to re-frame their thinking 

Dear Families,

 

We all have times when our thinking can be helpful or unhelpful.  Psychologists refer to unhelpful thinking patterns as 'cognitive distortions, thinking mistakes or thinking errors'.  Whilst a degree of unhelpful thinking is typical for everyone, there can be times when unhelpful thinking can become habitual and can negatively impact our emotions, behaviour and world view.  

 

Some examples of unhelpful thinking routines are explained below:

 -All or Nothing thinking

Seeing things in only two categories, so they’re either good or bad, black or white, with no shades of grey. A common distortion that makes you think — and therefore feel — that if something is not all of what you want then it’s none of what you want.

-Overgeneralization

Taking one negative event or detail about a situation and making it a universal pattern that is a truth about your whole life. For example: This person didn’t want to hang out with me. No one ever wants to hang out with me! Or: I messed up my math work today. I never do anything right!

-Catastrophizing

Taking a problem or something negative and blowing it up out of proportion. For example: This party is going to be the worst experience ever! Or: If I miss kicking a goal, I'll die of embarrassment and no-one will want me on the team again.

-Discounting the Positive

Taking something positive that has happened and minimizing it so that it doesn’t “count” as a good thing in your life or experience. It discounts any evidence against our negative view of ourselves or our situation. For example: I did well on that one test, but I just got lucky. Or: This person said, ‘I love hanging out with you,’ but she’s just being nice. She doesn’t really mean it.

 

As a parent, you can help your child by noticing when you may use unhelpful thinking and then re-framing it in a light-hearted and non-judgmental way. The goal is to model for your child that we all make thinking mistakes but by noticing them and making corrections with levity and compassion we can re-frame our thinking to make it more helpful.   

 

When doing so it is important to remember that it's not about invalidating the way your child feels, it's about helping your child to regain perspective about the helpfulness of their thinking routines, replacing unhelpful routines with ones that are more flexible or realistic. 

 

best wishes,

 

Peta Overbury

Wellbeing Leader