How to “fix” your Child’s Negative Attitude

If you have a child that is struggling with having a bad attitude, showing signs of anxiety, or going through a big life transition, gratitude journaling can help!  

If you’re new here, I’m Tonya Johnson, founder of Helping Hearts Homeschool where I specialize in working with parents and ministry leaders who are focused on building a solid foundation for the next generation through my various social media platforms. I believe that it’s important to stay ahead of the crowd when it comes to keeping the attention of our children. The world is fighting for their hearts; we need to fight harder. Like anything else, social media is just a tool. We simply focus on using it for positive vs negative.

I'm not a doctor, and I'm definitely not telling anyone to forgo medicine or therapy, but from someone who has worked with dozens of kids and teens struggling with all of the above, I can attest that this works. Let me explain, and then we'll go through a couple ways to incorporate gratitude journaling into your homeschool. 

A lot of the time a bad attitude stems from ungratefulness. We all tend to focus on the negative first, but kids/teens do so even more. When constantly focusing on the things you don't have, a bad attitude is easy to have. Consistently shifting focus to the things we do have and the things that are going right brightens our countenance and overall demeanor, the same holds true for our kids. 

I've suffered from crippling anxiety since I was a very small child. Something I learned early on was to ground myself by focusing on my 5 senses which I've been able to transfer over to gratitude journaling. I'll explain a little bit more on that in a minute.  

Life transitions always have pros and cons. Below is a picture of us about a year ago as we were packing up our life into a 20 something foot U-Haul and departing on a cross country move. All the emotions were going, Glori absolutely had some moodiness (so did I) in the weeks and even months that followed, but eventually we all evened back out to normal. 

Again, focusing on the negative is much easier than focusing on the positive. Consistently practicing gratitude journaling throughout the busiest seasons of our kids life will provide them not only some stability, but a way to stay focused on what's going right vs dwelling on all the change which can lead to both moodiness and anxiety. 

There are two ways to journal. The first one is a bit easier, but the second one is more effective because it's tailored to the individual child. 

Guided journals aren't a bad tool to use. Personally I like to have one on hand for my daughter to use on days where our life is a little more chaotic. The option of having something for her to do completely own her own is nice sometimes. Click here to see our favorite guided journals. 

Check out the corresponding video to see a few examples from each journal. 

Guided journaling has it's place, but it's very confining. Free reign journaling is more tailored to the individual child. The corresponding video goes through the process with you, and below you can download a free journaling pack. I've included a sleep and mood tracker also as an extra bonus. This pack works for adults too, if you'd like to see how I do my own journaling, click here.

If you like anything you see, simply click on the picture for more information.