Accentuate the Positive

In the past few days, I have been hearing a lot about being positive. To be honest … I oftentimes struggle with this in regard to education and in particular the education of highly-abled or gifted kids. It’s easy to see all the negative aspects ~ such as how society views our children ~ when examples seem to be staring us in the face almost daily.

That being said … it is extremely important as the parent of a gifted child to do our best to be positive for their sake; especially when they are young. They are attuned to our every word and gesture … and like it or not … we are their first role model. Due to their asynchronous development, we too often forget that their emotional response to other’s feelings can make it difficult for them to respond to negativity in an appropriate manner.

As parents and adults who work with gifted children, we need to enable our kids to ~ as the hit song from the 1940’s reminds us and covered by Paul McCartney below ~ ♪♫♪ “accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative” ♪♫♪. They will have plenty of time for negativity when they grow up.

A blog post from Krissy Venosdale, ‘When Obstacles Become Opportunities’, hit all the right notes for me. It made me think that we must do the same as parents … turn obstacles into opportunities. I’m not saying that this is a simple task because it isn’t.

When your child comes home from school and tells you they were bored or from the local playground and tells you they were bullied, meet their concerns with a measured response. Don’t over-react or use profanity. Talk to them about how other people’s actions make them feel and ways they could respond. Use it as a learning experience by asking them to consider how their own words and actions make other children feel. You’ll be surprised at how well they perceive the situation. In doing so, you are respecting both their intellect and maturity level.

I don’t make any promises that this will change your life or that of your child’s life. I don’t think you can use positive thinking to affect human nature. What I am saying is that having a positive outlook on life is an important part of growing up and the basis for improving social interaction. When things don’t go their way, they should move on and explore alternatives. Accentuate the positive!