It’s 5:30 p.m., and you’ve just finished a long day. Dinner is still yet to be started, your phone is still buzzing with unread emails, and your child is sitting at the table just staring at their homework. When you gently ask what’s going on, they snap, “I can’t do this!” and shove the paper away. Within seconds, their frustration escalates into tears, then yelling. You feel your own emotions spike. Your chest tightens, your thoughts race: ‘We’ve been over this! Why is this always so hard? I don’t have time for this tonight!’ You’re caught between wanting to help and feeling completely overwhelmed. The room feels louder, smaller, more charged.
In moments like this, both the parent and the child are finding themselves caught in a stress feedback loop. An anxious thought or stressful event triggers an emotional response causing your brain to release stress hormones and your body to react with physical symptoms like a racing heart, shallow breathing, or tension. These sensations in the body trigger a feeling that “something is wrong,” which fuels even more worried thoughts and physical symptoms that keep you stuck in the cycle. In the scenario above, the parent is feeling that surge of anxious thoughts, emotional arousal, and physical sensations. These feelings of stress in the body can trigger the parent to want to correct, fix, or shut the situation down quickly so they can move on to what else needs to be accomplished that evening. This urge leads the parent to react and respond to their child from a state of dysregulation. Situations like these are the kind of everyday moment where optimism might not come immediately or innately. Practicing optimism is a skill that must be accessed intentionally, often beginning with a pause, a breath, and a shift in how to interpret what’s unfolding.
When you hear the term “optimism,” you might immediately think of someone telling you to “look on the bright side” or “think positively.” However, fostering optimism is more than just the power of positive thinking – it is a cognitive and emotional framework and a skill that can be practiced. Practicing and cultivating optimism can be an important protective factor for buffering stress, promoting adaptive coping to emotionally difficult situations, and can also help to enhance parent-child relationships.
The Links between Optimism, Parenting, and Child Development
Child development research has found that parents’ psychological functioning, which can include one’s optimism, influences the quality of parents’ interactions with their children and is linked to children’s own social emotional skills and behaviors (Cabrera et al., 2021; Castro-Schilo et al., 2014). For example, in a study where families were followed from infancy into toddlerhood, mothers’ and fathers’ optimism (measured when their infants were 9 months old) was associated with fewer behavior problems and greater social skills in their toddlers a year later (Hennigar, 2021).
Optimism can shape how parents show up emotionally for their children, and in moments of stress or adversity, optimism and resilience can be a strong protective factor for children’s development (Castro-Schilo et al., 2014; Cabrera et al., 2021; Qi et al., 2022). When parents approach stressors with a more optimistic cognitive framework, they tend to have more adaptive emotional coping strategies to respond to challenging moments (Carver & Scheier, 2014; Nes & Segerstrom, 2006). This, in turn, can support children’s own emerging ability to regulate their own emotions and responses to stress, as children rely heavily on caregivers for co-regulation in early development (Paley & Hajal, 2022; Lobo & Lunkenheimer, 2020). Optimism is more than just an internal mindset. It can become an interpersonal, regulatory process that shapes the emotional climate of the family and scaffold children’s own developing resilience in the face of stressors (Paley & Hajal, 2022; Qi et al., 2022).
4 Clinical Tools for Cultivating and Practicing Optimism
So how can you work on cultivating and practicing optimism? Here are four clinically backed tools to start.
- Challenge Pessimistic Thought Patterns
An important step in cultivating optimism is to identify and challenge existing pessimistic thought patterns and replace them with new beliefs that allow for more flexibility interpretations of thoughts, feelings, or events. For example, when parenting stress escalates, the first reaction is often automatic and driven by emotions. Cultivating and practicing optimism does not come from ignoring that stress, but rather from interrupting the stress feedback loop and reshaping your interpretations of it.
Next time that you are faced with a challenging or stressful parenting moment, try to Pause – Interpret – Respond:
- Pause: Take a moment to notice the emotional surge in your mind and body.
- Interpret: Identify the first thought that pops up for you. For example, “My child is doing this on purpose to test me.” Reframe the thought by shifting to a more balanced, optimistic interpretation. “My child is struggling, not trying to hurt me.”
- Respond: Finally, react and behave in a way that is aligned with that reframed thought.
- Ground Yourself with Gratitude
Optimism grows by gently shifting your attention to what is safe, meaningful, or supportive in the present moment. Practicing gratitude can reduce stress, improve emotional regulation, and increase optimism by activating areas of your brain associated with reward, connection, and calm.
One way to ground yourself in the present moment is to practice gratitude. Even just a small amount of appreciation can tell your nervous system that there is safety available. This can move your body out of a fight or flight response and into a more regulated state.
Gratitude works best when it is small, specific, and believable. This helps to reinforce and build optimism rather than forcing it. So, when things start to feel overwhelming or you feel a strong negative emotional response surging, try practicing micro-gratitude’s. Zoom way in to the micro-moments that you feel appreciation for. For example, “I am grateful we made it through bedtime,” “I’m grateful for that one moment today when my child laughed,” or “I’m grateful that I got out of the house today.”
Another way of practicing gratitude is to use the “Both/And” approach to help you make space for two competing truths in any given moment. This approach helps to avoid toxic positivity by pairing honest feelings and reflections with appreciation. For example, “This is really hard and I’m grateful that I get another chance to respond differently,” or “My child is overwhelmed and I can see that they are really trying.”
- Practice an Opposite ‘Optimistic’ Action
There will inevitably be moments in your parenting when you feel your emotional state is being pushed towards withdrawal, harshness, or hopelessness. In these moments, you might feel the urge to shut down or raise your voice. Instead of reacting from this emotional state, consider doing an opposite action to counteract these feelings. For example, you could move closer to your child, force yourself to use a calm tone, or offer one small gesture of connection like eye contact or a gentle touch.
Behavior can sometimes lead emotion. Acting in an opposite, optimistic, direction even when you don’t feel like it can gradually start to shift mood and mindset.
- Spot and Savor Strengths
Optimism can flourish when you actively notice what is working well, not just what is difficult. However, our brains are wired to remember negative interactions, thoughts, or feelings than the positive. Taking a moment to actively practice identifying strengths and savoring moments is an important step towards building a strength-based narrative about your life. But, this can take practice!
At the end of the day, think about or write down:
- One thing your child did well that day
- One thing you did well as a parent
- One moment of connection you had
After you identify each of those things, take a few conscious moments to truly savor them. Share them with your partner or a friend to truly amplify the emotional impact.
Cultivating Hope as a Family Practice
Optimism is not just an attitude or character trait. It is a relational and regulatory tool that can grow with time and attention. It is not static – you can become more optimistic by practicing. Even small shifts in your mindset and how you approach parenting can have cascading effects on your child’s emotional development.
References
Cabrera, N. J., Hennigar, A., Alonso, A., McDorman, S. A., & Reich, S. M. (2021). The protective effects of maternal and paternal factors on children’s social development. Adversity and Resilience Science, 2(2), 85–98. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42844-021-00041-x
Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (2014). Dispositional optimism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(6), 293–299. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2014.02.003
Castro-Schilo, L., Taylor, Z. E., Ferrer, E., Robins, R. W., Widaman, K. F., & Conger, R. D. (2014). Parents’ optimism, positive parenting, and child peer competence in Mexican-origin families. Journal of Family Psychology, 28(4), 481–491. https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0000013
Hennigar, A. (2021). The influence of fathers’ and mothers’ psychological functioning on children’s social development: Examining mediating and moderating pathways (Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland). Digital Repository at the University of Maryland (DRUM). http://hdl.handle.net/1903/27416
Lobo, F. M., & Lunkenheimer, E. S. (2020). Understanding the parenting context of emotion regulation development: A process model. Developmental Psychology, 56(7), 1207–1222. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000928
Nes, L. S., & Segerstrom, S. C. (2006). Dispositional optimism and coping: A meta-analytic review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(3), 235–251. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr1003_3
Paley, B., & Hajal, N. J. (2022). Conceptualizing emotion regulation and coregulation as family-level phenomena. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 25(1), 19–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-022-00378-4
Qi, W., Shi, J., & Cui, L. (2022). Parental optimism improves youth psychological well-being: Family cohesion and youth optimism as serial mediators. Healthcare, 10(10), 1832. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare10101832
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