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Oct. 9th, 2013 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganursulaThings that make you happy:
Mad (playing with her stuffed bunny family in bed, smiles)
Mom: 'I like seeing you smile. Its great to have you happy.'
Mad: 'I am happy. It was a really good day today.'
Mom: 'That's wonderful. I wish all of your days could be really good days.'
Mad: 'Most of them are.
I posted that to g+ the other day. True story. Madeleine does seem to find a lot of joy in her life, and to appreciate the experiences she has. I think Marie is much like this in personality.
What I didn't post is the other half of the story - the William turn of events where he only talked about how much he didn't like school, and how he didn't have a good day, and how he couldn't tell me anything good.
Here is the thing - on any given day Madeleine might have had an objectively worse day of it than William. But at the end of the day she is still likely to say it was a good day, and he is still likely to say it was a bad day. If we ask about best parts of the day and bad parts, she is likely to say 'I can't think of a bad part', and he is likely to say 'I can't think of a good part.'
It seems to just be a personality thing. And its consistent with other aspects of their personality - Madeleine embraces a new experience, William fears it. But it worries me. We know something about self-talk, and what we know is that dwelling on the negative and repeating or exaggerating the negative engenders dissatisfaction. We believe our self-talk. With positive self-talk we can face a challenging situation and deal with it, with negative we fall victim to it. I spend a lot of my life examining my own self-talk in an effort to stay sane and I don't want my kids to develop bad habits with theirs.
We have been talking with William about his dialogue. And we've asked him to be able to express some positive thoughts. Sometimes he tries. I want to be respectful of his negative feelings, while still trying to get him to admit the possibility of positive feelings.
The other night he said 'I am trying to be positive, but i really just don't like school. School just isn't very nice.' Well, fair enough. I'm not quite sure what to do with it. All of our feedback from the school is that he has adjusted well, and is happy and having fun while he is there. Usually I find him smiling at the end of the day. I am sitting on the idea of having him attend fewer hours of school per week. (I don't think zero hours would actually be the right thing, but perhaps more hours at home would?) There are a lot of things in our lives with William that work out this way.
Mad (playing with her stuffed bunny family in bed, smiles)
Mom: 'I like seeing you smile. Its great to have you happy.'
Mad: 'I am happy. It was a really good day today.'
Mom: 'That's wonderful. I wish all of your days could be really good days.'
Mad: 'Most of them are.
I posted that to g+ the other day. True story. Madeleine does seem to find a lot of joy in her life, and to appreciate the experiences she has. I think Marie is much like this in personality.
What I didn't post is the other half of the story - the William turn of events where he only talked about how much he didn't like school, and how he didn't have a good day, and how he couldn't tell me anything good.
Here is the thing - on any given day Madeleine might have had an objectively worse day of it than William. But at the end of the day she is still likely to say it was a good day, and he is still likely to say it was a bad day. If we ask about best parts of the day and bad parts, she is likely to say 'I can't think of a bad part', and he is likely to say 'I can't think of a good part.'
It seems to just be a personality thing. And its consistent with other aspects of their personality - Madeleine embraces a new experience, William fears it. But it worries me. We know something about self-talk, and what we know is that dwelling on the negative and repeating or exaggerating the negative engenders dissatisfaction. We believe our self-talk. With positive self-talk we can face a challenging situation and deal with it, with negative we fall victim to it. I spend a lot of my life examining my own self-talk in an effort to stay sane and I don't want my kids to develop bad habits with theirs.
We have been talking with William about his dialogue. And we've asked him to be able to express some positive thoughts. Sometimes he tries. I want to be respectful of his negative feelings, while still trying to get him to admit the possibility of positive feelings.
The other night he said 'I am trying to be positive, but i really just don't like school. School just isn't very nice.' Well, fair enough. I'm not quite sure what to do with it. All of our feedback from the school is that he has adjusted well, and is happy and having fun while he is there. Usually I find him smiling at the end of the day. I am sitting on the idea of having him attend fewer hours of school per week. (I don't think zero hours would actually be the right thing, but perhaps more hours at home would?) There are a lot of things in our lives with William that work out this way.
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Date: 2013-10-20 09:07 pm (UTC)I can't say with any certainty of what was going on internally, but I would usually have pretty reasonable days at Elementary school. However, when I got home and my grandmother would ask me how my day was, I always responded negatively, and the negative ranged from fairly mild to outright rage.