SO WE HAVE evidence for three kinds of influences on your child’s explanatory style. First, the form of the everyday causal analyses he hears from you—especially if you are his mother: If yours are optimistic, his will be too. Second, the form of the criticisms he hears when he fails: If they are permanent and pervasive, his view of himself will turn toward pessimism. Third, the reality of his early losses and traumas: If they remit, he will develop the theory that bad events can be changed and conquered. But if they are, in fact, permanent and pervasive, the seeds of hopelessness have been
...more
