100 Family Media Literacy Activities, Ages Pre-School through Teen Years

Are You a “High Hopes” Parent?

Attending to Our Children’s Attention Span

Building the Foundation for Resiliency Skills

Live and Play in Your World: Stimulus Addiction and the Growing Brain

Looking for Meaning in All the Right Places

Parenting Today: The World Has Changed, Have We?

Parenting as a Living System

Reading the Screen

Screen Time and Obesity

Screen Violence: Impact on Self as Relational Being

Teaching Children Gratefulness

Are You’re a “High Hopes” Parent?

The fact is hope will increase, if we pay attention to hopeful occurrences. Pretty soon, there are more hopeful things to talk about and our talk is filled with more hope. With more hope in front of us, we spot it in others and in our world more often and more quickly. Before we know it, the negative things are shrinking from lack of attention and the positives have increased—almost as if by magic! Of course, then we become more hopeful…the upward spiral continues…more good things happen.

Our world challenges us greatly to shift our attention to the hopeful, to what brings and enhances life. And I believe it affects our parenting profoundly. How can we stay focused on hope, on the positive, and on what is working in our daily lives with our children?
Here are five considerations for hopeful parenting in troubling times.

In his extensive research, C. R. Synder found five important indicators. (For more information, please see his excellent book, The Psychology of Hope.)

1.         Hopeful parents know how to get what they want. They are determined and enjoy being enterprising and flexible, especially during difficult times. Determination can be found in having a clear vision of what we want for our children and our families. Determination means having the mental energy and the physical stamina to stay with a challenge long enough for an effective solution to transpire. If we give up, we can be sure to be defeated. Your self-care goes a long way to helping you stay determined when the going gets rough. Pay attention to the signs of when you feel like giving up. Instead think of what you can give to yourself and to your children that will focus on your internal strengths and enhance your perseverance.

2.         Hopeful parents listen well. Listening and paying close attention to our children’s strengths increases our flexibility to change courses if our parenting strategy isn’t getting the results that we seek. Often we can learn from our kids what is needed once we follow our instincts and answer this question from our integrity: What will bring more life to this situation? As we observe our children from this perspective, we may find ourselves suddenly noticing lots of things that we can do to give them a sense of accomplishment, so they appreciate their talents in the moment and look forward to their future with hope.

3.         The children view hopeful parents as successful. It seems that hopeful parents demonstrate their autonomy by feeling successful. This definition of success isn’t the definition that seems to be the one our world cares about—big house, big car, lots of money, etc. Rather success is measured as “Having a high self-esteem and positive images of themselves.” This affects children on many levels—positive parents with high self-esteem grow hopeful, happy, and confident children with high self-esteem!

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