It’s easy to think negatively. We all do it sometimes. Examples of negative thoughts are:
- I can’t do anything right.
- I’m a bad parent.
- I can’t even raise my own child.
All these thoughts boil down to the same thing: “I’m not good enough the way that I am”.
Try to turn negative thoughts into more positive ones. It’s not easy to change negative thoughts if they’re already in your head. It can help to give it some thought beforehand.
Three important sentences to help you turn these thoughts around are:
- It’s not true because…
- A different way to look at it is…
- What can also happen is…
Pim, father of Kees, Anne and Thijs (3, 5 and 7 years old):
Yesterday a kindergarten teacher told me she wanted to speak to me after school. My first thought was, “I must’ve done something wrong again”. But then I told myself there was no need for all this negative thinking. I told myself, “A different way to look at it is that I don’t know what she wants to talk about. Maybe she’ll want to talk about something completely different. There’s no point in getting nervous about it now. I’ll see what it’s all about later.” It turned out she wanted to talk to me about the transition to the next grade after the summer holidays. Luckily I didn’t drive myself insane with all those negative thoughts beforehand.”
