When Your Kids Need A Change In Perspective, Try This

Every now and then, when tucking my kids into bed, one of them will comment that their day was so hard. When this happens, I try to ask them questions like, “What was one good thing that happened today?” My daughter has occasionally had a tough time with this, and can only see the things that went wrong.

One day recently, she did have a really hard day, when one of her baby goats died.

When this happened, our neighbor, who happens to be a goat farmer, brought her over another baby goat. As she was going to bed, she was so focused on the baby goat that died, she struggled to experience the joy of the new baby goat that was given to her.

I realized that asking questions wasn’t enough to get her perspective to fully shift. I told her to pick one wall in her room, and look at it. Once she was staring at the one wall, I said, “Brooklyn, are there other walls in your room?”

“Yes.”

“Do they have windows?”

“Yes.”

“Do they have pictures?”

“Yes.”

“Can you see them right now?”

“No.”

I explained to her that she couldn’t see all the details around her because she was only fixated on one wall. When she gets so focused on one bad thing, it gets really hard to see all the other good things going for her.

This was one simple demonstration I did that really helped my kids widen their perspective. If your kids need help seeing the good things going on around them, give this a try.