Research from the fields of positive psychology tells us that very early in life, children develop explanatory styles to understand events that happen to them and their emotional reactions to those events. These styles can be positive or negative, and are the roots of optimism and pessimism. As a child experiences events she internalizes self-talk to explain these events, and the songs of New Day are designed to make that self-talk hopeful and optimistic. We created these songs based on research on optimism within the relatively new field of Positive Psychology. Some of the key messages from this research include:
A future orientation with specific goals
A sense of anticipation
Optimism puts new skills in reach
Optimism stems from mastery motivation and persistence
As Dr. Martin Seligman clarified in his book, The Optimistic Child, it’s not the good and bad things that happen to children that determine their beliefs about themselves, others and the world in general. Rather it’s how children explain these events to themselves. This “explanatory style” is characterized by either optimism or pessimism. As parents and teachers, we can influence a child’s explanatory style both through modeling optimistic statements and by helping a child understand both positive and negative events. We can help a child understand that bad things are the exception and not the rule; and that bad times are temporary.
