Teaching our children has always been more by trial and error than science, but that has been pursued for some time, at least in experiment.
Think about a beautiful example done at Temple University in Philadelphia some years ago. The parents of a 4-year-old girl invited a research team to their home. The two professors explained to the little girl that she will get a prize at the end of their visit. This is just what they did, handing out 10 potential "prizes" and asking the girl to rank them from the best prize to the worst prize. Right before the girl, she found a truck, a doll, a broken pair of sunglasses, a pair of socks, and so forth. She was deliriously joyful at this game because she was told further that she will get the prize she liked the best.
The girl zeroed in on Barbie, and happily waited for the moment to receive the best prize. Yeah (drum roll please), and wait - oops. Something wrong. The researchers explained that they had made a mistake and they had to give the girl that she ranked as dead last - a pair of brown socks.
"Sorry for this big mistake."
Now, how does the parent help the child cope with this disappointing news? And this is the real research question.
What will you do? Before I tell you the answer, take a few minutes to think about the possible ways out.
Do you shift your girl's attention away from the socks toward the nice wrapping the prize came in? Do you comfort your girl by holding her or verbally soothing her? Do you "reframe" the situation, putting the socks on your hands and making them into a puppet or suggesting you give the socks to another kid who might really like them? Do you encourage your girl to change the situation, say, by talking to the researchers and telling them that she got the wrong prize?
Of all the options above, none are more positive than shifting the girl's attention and cognitive reframing. The effect of looking more closely at every cloud, to see the silver lining, is riveting. This is, in fact, associated with the lowest level of sadness and anger. If you think you are helping the child who was encouraged to change the situation by talking to the researchers, nothing could be further from the truth. That would lead to more anger and sadness than those in other conditions. The child would simply lose the ability to regulate her emotion in a positive way, directing herself to vent and lash out, instead.
Taking another perspective to look at adversity can always be a new opportunity. Whining never is.
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In one of last year's swim meet, Ethan didn't get to swim in 200yard freestyle relay that he usually swam. He didn't know about it until that morning. He was quite sad, started even to cry when the relay is about to start. Ophelia managed to show him that he can cheer for his teammates even though he can't swim in the relay. Both of them went to the pool and cheered for his teammates. He learned to look at the bright side when facing something that we can't change.
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