Understanding Thoughts

What This Skill Teaches

Having a thought does not mean that it’s important or true, even when it feels that way. Thoughts can be checked and changed.

Kids can learn to notice when they’re having an unhelpful thought, check the facts about the situation, and ask themselves if there is a more realistic or helpful thought to have instead.

Thoughts and feelings affect our behavior. Changing our thoughts can help us reduce uncomfortable emotions and navigate challenging situations better.

Try This at Home

1. 1

   When your child says something self-critical, help them question if it’s true. For example, if they say, “I’m so stupid” after doing badly on a quiz, you can ask, “What’s another reason you might have gotten a low grade?”

2. 2

   Use stories and characters. Point out what a character in a book or TV show is thinking and ask whether their thought is helpful or not.

3. 3

   Model recognizing your own thoughts: “I just had the thought that I’m going to mess this up. Let me check the facts.”

4. 4

   Recognizing and changing unhelpful thoughts takes practice. Help kids by asking: “Is there another thought you can have about what happened?”

5. 5

   Give positive feedback when your child does change an unhelpful thought. You might say, “Great job staying calm and thinking of all the possibilities!”

What This Skill Teaches

Middle schoolers can catastrophize or engage in all-or-nothing thinking (“If I don’t get an A+, I’m a failure.”). But just because a thought feels true doesn’t mean it is.

Understanding thoughts means learning to recognize unhelpful thoughts and change them. Kids can ask themselves, “Is this thought helpful or unhelpful? Is there a more helpful or realistic thought I can have instead?”

Changing our thoughts can help us decrease uncomfortable emotions and manage difficult situations better.

Try This at Home

1. 1

   If a child voices an unhelpful thought, don’t argue with it directly. “You’re not terrible!” feels dismissive. Instead say something like, “Is that thought being fair to you?”

2. 2

   Ask: “What would you say to a friend who had that thought?” This helps them apply fairness to themselves that they’d naturally extend to others.

3. 3

   It’s important to first validate a child’s thoughts, even if they’re unhelpful. “That sounds like a really hard thought to be carrying.” Then: “What do you actually know is true?”

4. 4

   Model recognizing your own thoughts. “I just told myself this was going to go terribly. Let me actually think about what I know.”

5. 5

   Saying something like, “You’re overreacting,” shuts the conversation down. Try asking questions about the thought instead.

What This Skill Teaches

Unhelpful thinking patterns — catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, mind-reading — are common and particularly intense in adolescence. Knowing how to recognize unhelpful thoughts is the first step to countering them.

Once teens recognize they are having an unhelpful thought, they can ask themselves questions to reframe or change it: “What is the likelihood this will happen?” “Is there evidence for this being true?”

Changing an unhelpful thought into a more helpful or realistic one can affect how you feel and what you do.

Try This at Home

1. 1

   Encourage teens to question their thinking themselves. “Is that thought being fair to you?” is more useful than “You’re thinking about this wrong.”

2. 2

   Avoid arguing with your teen’s thought directly. Instead ask, “Is there evidence for that?”

3. 3

   Share your own personal examples of moments when you engaged in unhelpful thinking and how it made you feel.

4. 4

   Don’t minimize your teen’s thought. Acknowledging and validating it first makes it easier to examine it. Say something like, “That sounds like a really hard thought.”

5. 5

   Take a step back. At this age, the most useful thing is creating space for teens to think through their thoughts and how they make them feel.