Guest Author - Sonja Meyer

All parents want their children happy. But how do you help kids feel content, avoid discouragement and find the glass half full whenever they face setbacks? In other words, how do you instill optimism?

Consider the following two scenarios. Which sounds most like your children?

Jake, a 7-year-old soccer player, is disappointed. His team just lost its eighth game. To make matters worse, he is the goalie, and he failed to stop the ball 12 times. "I'm no good," he says. "We lost because I can't do it, just like I can't do anything. We're going to lose every game this season."

His teammate, Jonathan, who plays a forward position, also complains. "I only scored one goal and we lost again. I guess they were just better at soccer. And having Ben out sick hurt us. Maybe if we practice harder we can do better next time. And maybe I should challenge that other team to shoot some hoops: that's what I'm really good at."

Jake and Jonathan represent two ends of the pessimism-optimism pendulum. Where your own children are, and where they will be as adults, depends in part on what you teach them about dealing with their experiences, experts say.

You've probably heard about how optimism goes hand-in-hand with self-esteem. You may think of parents who constantly heap praise, warranted and not, on their offspring. No matter what their children do, they give exaggerated kudos. "You're the best artist ever." "Wow, you are good at everything."

The problem is, that kind of praise makes kids feel good for the moment, but it doesn’t develop coping skills they'll need to be optimistic whenever confronted with defeat. And life will certainly give them their share of failures, no matter how many hugs and kind words you wrap around them.

So what is a parent to do? Well, you may want to learn about a movement in psychology called "learned optimism." The idea is rooted in a study by a well-known psychologist, Martin E.P. Seligman, whose work at a Philadelphia-area school brought groundbreaking results.

Seligman, who has written several books, including "The Optimistic Child: A Proven Program To Safeguard Children Against Depression And Build Lifelong Resilience" and "Learned Optimism," says his research not only proves that childhood depression can be prevented, but kids can be taught optimism. Seligman is a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and past president of the Division of Clinical Psychology of the American Psychology Association.

He says true optimism goes beyond repeating "I am special" and similar mantras. In fact, his books say the self-esteem movement, without accompanying lessons in problem-solving, is to blame for individuals who find life not as easy as their parents claimed. Some eventually suffer from depression, either in childhood or later as adults; others may have a hard time adjusting to challenges.

Instead, he says parents and educators need to give kids the chance to fail, figure out why they failed, and be encouraged to tackle the challenge again. Encouragement, though, is not just empty praise heaped on children to make them feel good whether they have accomplished something or not. It is giving your children loving, positive motivation to try again. By working to master something, they gain self-esteem.

Seligman says true optimism also means being able to explain accurately why good or bad events happen. If you want children to be optimistic, help them see that setbacks are temporary, not permanent; that their problem is specific to one situation and not pervasive in everything they do; and that they are not totally to blame for every failure. He says kids must take responsibility when they are truly at fault, but they also should not blame themselves for every bad result over which they had no control.

So how do you help children become more like Jonathan, who is clearly more optimistic than Jake? Help them analyze each downfall, take responsibility for what's their fault and see what's not, find ways to overcome it so it's not a permanent problem and look for other areas in their life where they have succeeded.

In short, don't insulate kids from failure. Give them a chance to tackle challenges, breaking them into more manageable steps. When they do succeed, commend them for having worked hard toward their accomplishment. And help them see opportunities to master skills and continue striving for goals. Let them see that they really do have some control over their destiny so they can fill the rest of the half-full glass.