Children and Pessimism

by Carol Tuttle Carol Tuttle is a Master Energy Therapist and the author of the best-selling book, Remembering Wholeness: A Personal Handbook for Thriving in the 21st Century. Children need emotional validation.If their negative feelings about what is happening in their lives are not validated, they may continue focusing on the negative until they are validated. Children can become pessimistic if they do not feel they are being emotionally heard and validated. As the parent of four children, I have learned to not skip the important step of emotionally acknowledging my children. Before I realized how important this was, I was eager to try to quickly change their negative feelings and views of their life into positives. Once you have validated your child's negative feelings, you can give your child a choice: to continue to perceive his/her situation as negative, or to choose to change it to positive. The first choice teaches our children to be victims in a world of random events they are powerless to control.The second choice teaches them they have the power to change anything for the better. Recently my daughter came to me expressing her negative feelings about a friend's treatment of her. I could have quickly dismissed her feelings and encouraged her to not let it bother her, or joined her by saying, "That is terrible! She is so mean." I did neither.Instead the conversation went something like this: Mom: "That is unfortunate, Anne.You must feel really sad about the way she treated you." Anne: "I do.I don't like it when she treats me that way." Mom: "I understand.Nobody likes to be treated that way.You deserve to have your friends love and respect you.When you are ready to clear these negative feelings, and would like my help, let me know. Or, you can continue feeling bad. But remember, whatever you focus on in life will cause more of it show up as your experience." Anne: "I want to clear these bad feelings right now and create a positive friendship with her." At this point, I took Anne through a process called "Emotional Freedom Technique," which is designed to clear negative feelings and stressful energies that keep us from progressing. I have taught my children that the law of attraction, or the law of the harvest (which is that whatever we put out returns to us multiplied) is in constant operation in their lives. If they put out negative thoughts and feelings, they will have more negative experiences show up in their lives. If they put out positive thoughts and feelings, they will have more positive experiences show up in their lives. Anne understands this universal principle, and was eager to clear the negative thoughts and feelings and change them into positives.It was important that her negative feelings were acknowledged and validated first. Most adults in our world were not emotionally validated.They were emotionally shut down or ignored.As parents we can do a much better job of validating our children's emotional response to their life events -- free of any judgment.Once validated, those negative thoughts and feelings can be easily released and positive thoughts and feelings can be created. After Anne cleared her negatives, she decided what she wanted to create was a fun-loving, kinder relationship with her friend. She helped put this into motion in her life by speaking what she wanted in positive "I am" statements such as this: After Anne's energy-clearing session, she called her friend and easily made amends.Her friend was apologetic, they laughed and started planning their next activity.What Anne had asked for in her affirmations had already begun to show up for her. Children model their parents' language and perceptions of the world.If Mom and Dad are pessimistic, the children often are, too. If Mom and Dad are optimists who are willing to validate their child's negative emotional responses to a situation, then help them change that, they play a powerful role in teaching their children they can have lives that are positive, and that they can look forward to many successes. Learn powerful parenting techniques on Carol's best-selling two-hour parenting seminar on DVD, Intentional Parenting: Raising Conscious Children that Understand and Use the Laws of Creation. Just click on the title to review this product and all of Carol's life-changing books, CDs and DVDs that are highly recommended by Dr. Mercola. Dr. Mercola's Comment:Earlier this year I had an opportunity to attend a three-day Internetseminar with Carol and had a chance to get to know her. Although I enjoyed the seminar, the highlight was the opportunity to get to know Carol. Without a doubt, energy psychology is one of the greatest tools I have ever encountered in the healing modalities, and EFT is an amazing application of this discipline. Carol happens to be one of the most gifted EFT clinicians I know of. If you want to apply some of the principles Carol discusses in the above article and learn powerful healing techniques to release the emotional issues that are keeping you from living a more fulfilling life, you willwantto pick up Carol's best-selling two-hour parenting seminar on DVD, Intentional Parenting: Raising Conscious Children that Understand and Use the Laws of Creation.You can also reviewCarol's other life-changing books, CDs and DVDs thatI highly recommended. Carol stopped seeing clients a while ago so she can concentrate on sharing her message over the Internet.However, there was such a demand for her services that shedecided to limit her patient load andincrease her fees to $10,000 for a series ofcomprehensive individual consultations-- even at thoserates she has more clients than she can handle. InOctober Iinvited Carol to spend some time at my center to teach my staff some of her principles. We had a great time and decided that we will offer a joint seminar in Chicago on April 6, 7 and 8. I want to tell you that now as by then it will have been nearly two years since I have held a major event. The last one was also in Chicago in June 2004. It was an EFT event with Gary Craig and we sold out the 550 seats in a few days and had a waiting list of over 500 people who could not attend. Well, this event should be far better than the one last year as we have some incredible programs that will absolutely amaze you at the benefits you will receive. Can't tell you much more about it now, but I do want to forewarn you to mark you calendars now for next April 6-8 and plan on being in Chicago for an event you will remember the rest of your life.