“I can’t get my kid to put down the iPad! He starts screaming!!”

“My kid never gets ready for school in time, and I end up shouting!

“My son taunts my daughter all the time and she keeps yelling!”

“My three-year-old throws massive tantrums anytime she doesn’t get anything and we end up giving in!”

“My baby is such a picky eater, I am always stressed!”

I don’t think there is a single mom out there who cannot relate to one or more of the above scenarios.

As parents we often feel clueless about how to deal with negative behaviours of our kids. We get stressed and angry after the umpteenth reminder and end up yelling, resorting to punishments like time out, or for older kids - loss of a privilege.

I hated myself every time I yelled at my kids (let’s be real – moms are humans too!). And if coincidentally, when you are already feeling guilty for screaming and at that perfect moment you stumble on an article on “Yelling at your child diminishes their self-worth” – well I don’t have to tell you how that guilt just intensifies!

As for timeouts or loss of privileges, these punishments sometimes “make” kids listen to us, but rarely build the positive behaviours we really want.

‍

Change starts from us...

I wanted to know if I was doing anything wrong. I wanted to know if there are better ways to build healthier habits in my children. So I started my research on how to encourage and motivate kids.

I took courses on child psychology, positive psychology, emotional well-being from the best mentors of the world – and I cannot tell you how these learnings have helped me to build healthier habits, both in my kids and also in myself.

But before going into the techniques of building positive habits in our kids, I want all of us parents to build one positive habit in ourselves first. Confused? Let me explain…

‍

How our brain works!

When our ancestors lived in the wild, they would always scan any environment for negative aspects - dangers and risks. It was part of the survival instinct that alerted them of dangers, helped them to take the safe decisions and stay alive.

This natural ability of our brain to notice the negative things first is called the “Negativity Bias”. We give more psychological weight to bad experiences than good ones. In fact, research indicates that negative emotions sometimes have 3X stronger impact than positive emotions. Not only that, we tend to remember the negative memories a lot more than the positive ones!

With the progress of civilization this negativity bias kept evolving. You can still see this in each and every one of us in our daily lives.

Imagine a weekend, a beautiful day outside. You and your husband are having some much-desired lazy time, talking about random stuff. Your two kids, 7 and 9 years old, are playing together in the living room. Life seems good.

Suddenly you hear them arguing over a toy, argument turns into a fight followed by screams! Both of you get up and try to sort things out.

But kids are adamant, they both want things their way and after trying to calm them down for some time (which fails miserably) you lose it and start screaming yourself about how they are always fighting and arguing and can never play nicely together!

Can you relate? This is our brain forgetting that they were actually playing nicely for quite some time and focusing on the negative part only.

Take another example. Your seven-year-old gets up in the morning, brushes his teeth and even puts on his clothes and shoes. But then takes forever to finish his breakfast. The clock is ticking and you give reminders to finish up quickly. But after the fifth reminder your brain forgets that he got ready completely on his own. Rather you start getting annoyed about how he is always stalling and getting late for school.

Negativity bias is real and it affects all of us. As mothers we need to train our brain to see past this when dealing with our kids. If we keep focusing on the mistakes our kids make we can never encourage them or motivate them enough to build healthy habits on their own!

How to fight Negativity Bias!

If this negativity bias is so natural how to get rid of it? The fact is you can never fully get rid of this characteristic. It is a survival mechanism and it is there to protect us when needed. But there are ways to keep this thing in check:

1. Pause & Reflect:

Always remember this feature of your brain. Whenever you get annoyed, angry, stressed or see yourself making remarks like “you always do this” or “you never do that” to your kid (or to your husband for that matter), just pause and give a second thought.

Make a conscious effort to look for positive aspects of the experience you are having. Take active measures to notice the good in both the world and in yourself. You will feel resistance at first, but choose not to focus on them. Intentionally being conscious about this rewires your brain, turning this into a habit.

2. Proactively Focus on the Positives:

Let's think, in the above scenarios. how we could have proactively focused on the positives?

For example, in the first scenarios, we could have gone and appreciated both children for playing together rather than focusing on the fact that they got into a fight...

In the second scenario, we could have focused on the fact that the child got ready completely on his own, appreciating it and in the process encouraging him to speed up his breakfast as well.

This capacity to be present in the moment and appreciate the good things while they are happening is known as "Savoring". It allows us to be mindful of the positive emotions and lets us enjoy it more, which solidifies the positive memories.

Because of negativity bias we are predisposed to collecting and clinging to negative memories, but we can counteract this by intentionally developing a more diverse and deeply rooted base of positive memories through savoring.

As we fill our memory with more positive experiences, we become less susceptible to negativity bias.

‍

So moms, please start training yourself to deal with your own negativity bias from today. The techniques we will learn that create healthy habits in our kids, will require us to look past the negativities and focus on the positives more.

‍

Remember

“You need the negative focus to survive, but a positive one to thrive” – Dr. Richard Boyatzis

‍