Apr

How I teach my children to have a “Can-do” attitude

A single parent is constantly presented with daily challenges. To overcome these challenges I attempt to have a “can-do” attitude. I regularly stress vigilance to not only myself but to my children. I am doing my best as a parent when practicing the “can-do” attitude, exercise patience, always ask a question and praise my kids for their accomplishments. How could I go wrong?

What constitutes a “can-do” attitude?

The first thing is eliminating the two words “can’t do”. There will be many people that influence my child’s life but none more important than myself. Both of my kids see live with me and therefore my example is the one they see the most. Disney has a saying that employees, or team members, as they are commonly referred to, are “on-stage” when in public, as parents we are “on-stage” 24/7. So, it all starts with us and the way we verbalize challenges in our lives.

Where did my kids pick this negative stuff up?

When my children came to live with me, permanently, one of the first issues I noticed was their frustration with doing tasks and how they reacted to a challenge. My 5 year old said “I can’t” whenever she was presented with an obstacle and therefore, my 3 year old said “I can’t” as a result of her sister saying it so much. Looking back does it really matter which adult they picked up the “I can’t” attitude from? Not really. My rationale was as my children are presented to more and more people which in turn, will present more and more opportunities to pick up bad habits. The only way to negate those bad habits is to instill as many good ones as I possibly can. I had to start making the daily effort to get them on the right course to a “can-do” way of thinking.

When to ask for help?

The first thing I instilled was the need to ask for help. It took me until I was in my late twenties to get this concept myself so my kids are 25 years ahead of me in this area J This is easy, when you are challenged with something then ask for help. I started with staying away from the word “can’t” or “can not”, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing, when stating challenges to my kids. Whenever my kids say the word “can’t” I immediately say, “Yes you can, and you just need to ask for help.” For example, my five year old dresses herself and in the beginning she had trouble with the zipper and the button on most of her jeans – she still does when they are new. I even have trouble sometimes. Even though she didn’t ask for help initially, I offered, but she refused and said, “I can do it”. I left her alone. After struggling for a minute she walks up to me, very upset, and stated, “I can’t do it.” Of course my reply was, “You can do it, and you just need help.” She pressed on that she didn’t need help, she just couldn’t do it!

Ask a question instead of assuming the obvious

The part I wasn’t communicating was she needed to be shown an easier way than the way she was trying to zip up her pants. I didn’t conclude that she had zipped up her pants many times and she knew what to do. Where I made my mistake was assuming she didn’t know how to zip up her pants. The fact was she needed to be shown how to use both hands to zip up a zipper. She knew the zipper had to go up and she knew how to do it but, she couldn’t get it zipped this time. For me, realizing my child’s dilemma was an important step in teaching her how to have a “can-do” attitude. I need to know what she is frustrated with to instill in her the confidence she needs to ask for help and communicate the difficulty she is having with an issue. It was only when I asked a question, that she gave me the answer. She said, “The zipper won’t go up.” I replied, “Did you try pulling the zipper up and holding down your jeans?” she answered, “but I don’t want to pull down my jeans I want to zip up my zipper?” and I said, “Sweetheart, I won’t pull down your jeans. We need to hold the zipper straight so your jeans can zip up easier.” I then asked her if I could show her an easier way to pull up her zipper and she agreed. I showed her that one hand holds the jeans down, and straight, and the other hand pulls the zipper up. I zipped up the jeans, then unzipped them and placed her hands where mine were and repeated the process. After, she did it on her own. The look of accomplishment on her face was astounding. It must have been the look Columbus had when seeing land after two months at sea. It was that profound. She looked up at me and said, “I can do it daddy.”

Lessons learned – by parent and child

What an accomplishment! I praised her for doing it on her own and told her how proud I was with her accomplishment. I couldn’t help but wonder how many times she couldn’t zip up her pants in school or maybe how long it took her. No wonder she was so excited about such a simple action. There were many lessons learned in that twenty seconds on a Friday morning. The lessons my daughter learned were when you are having difficulty doing something, ask for help; always have a “can-do” attitude; you can always ask daddy for help; when things seem difficult calm yourself down and ask for help; daddy is very easy to approach to ask for help and the most important lesson is daddy listens to me. The lessons l earned were listen very carefully to the challenge my child is having and ask a question instead of assuming the obvious.

Daily opportunities

The opportunity we have to develop our child’s life is inconceivable at the very least. Every day presents many challenges and how we deal with those obstacles plays a direct effect on our child’s life. Thank you for your time and I hope you enjoyed this post.