Sustainable Parenting | Raising Confident Kids with Positive Parenting Strategies

120. Squashing ANTs: Tools for Your Child's Negative Self-Talk

• Flora McCormick, LCPC, Parenting Coach

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That crushing moment when your child says, “I’m stupid” or “Nobody likes me” can leave you feeling helpless. You’ve tried everything — reassurance, distraction, even giving in — but the negative thought loops just won’t quit.

In this episode of the Sustainable Parenting podcast, we dive into one of the most common parenting challenges: those Automatic Negative Thoughts (what brain psychologist Daniel Amen calls ANTs) that sneak into our children’s minds. These thoughts not only affect their mood but can chip away at their confidence and cooperation.

The best part? These tools don’t just help with negative thoughts in childhood— they are a key tools for raising confident adults, giving the tools for lifelong resilience and self-confidence. Bonus - these are great tools for US to use, too (as parents). When we model these ways to decrease our own shame and blame, we help our kids to see that they can do it, also.

So if you’re ready to trade helplessness for hope, tune in. 

By the time you finish listening you will know:

✨Positive parenting strategies you can start using today.

✨Four simple, science-backed tools to help your child recognize and reframe negative thinking. 

You’ll discover how adding a tiny word like “yet” can shift their whole outlook, why swapping out extreme words like “always” and “never” can calm their big feelings, and how a simple butternut squash story completely changed the way I approach these moments with my own kids.

Together, we’ll explore sustainable parenting solutions that balance kindness and firmness — so your child can grow in confidence, and you can finally feel more calm, connected, and confident in your parenting.

✨Want more?

✨ Schedule a FREE 20 min clarity call with Sustainable Parenting, so we can answer any questions you may have. Together, we'll make a plan for your best next steps to have more calm & confidence in parenting - while having kids that listen!:)

✨ Download the FREE pdf. on getting kids to listen, for strategies that take you out of the "gentle mom - monster mom" cycle, with effective positive parenting strategies.

✨ Sign up for an upcoming LIVE ONLINE workshop with Flora, or purchase a past replay: https://sustainableparenting.com/workshop where you get 30 min. of learning and 30 min. of LIVE Q & A time, with replays sent afterwards.

✨ Buy a 3 session Coaching Bundle (saving you $100) - for THREE 30-min sessions 1:1 with ME, where we get right to the heart of your challenges, and give you small, powerful shifts that make a huge difference fast.

Speaker 1:

Do you ever notice your child spiraling into negative self-talk, saying things like I'm stupid, nobody likes me, I'll never be good at this? It can be so heartbreaking and frustrating to hear our kids get stuck in those thought loops, and today we're diving into a powerful tool that I love from Daniel Amen in order to change the negative thinking patterns that may be going on. And, friend, make sure you stay till the end, because I'm going to share how butternut squash changed my life and the power of ants. Hello and welcome to the Sustainable Parenting Podcast. Let me tell you, friend, this place is different. We fill that gap between gentle parenting and harsh discipline that's really missing to parent with kindness and firmness at the same time and give you the exact steps to be able to parent in ways that are more realistic and effective and, for that reason, finally feel sustainable. Welcome. First, I want to highlight our listener of the week, who is AGBSCHE I don't know how to pronounce that who says this podcast made me feel seen and finally be confident in my parenting boundaries. Thank you so much for sharing that and I'm so grateful that this podcast is impacting you in that way. Our goal here is always to empower and equip you to be the calm, confident parent you always wanted to be, and I'm so glad that you're experiencing that. Friend, if you'd like to leave a review to share how sustainable parenting has been impacting your life, I would be so grateful. It helps others to know what's possible in their families too, and you can do so easily by scrolling to the bottom of all episodes, clicking on that fifth star and leaving a comment. Also, be sure you subscribe to the podcast so that you regularly get the downloads each week and don't miss a single tool and strategy to be parenting with more kindness and firmness at the same time. So parenting finally feels sustainable.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's dive in to this topic First, let's pause and just acknowledge that every child has negative thinking in some degree, some less than others. I mean, I'll never forget this one story that a mentor in high school told us on the basketball bus heading home from a basketball game where I was a cheerleader and he was such a vibrant storyteller. I'm not going to do it justice, but what he shared was, you know, a story of two kids who had very different personalities, and the one was overly optimistic and the other was overly pessimistic and the parents were like we've got to find some way to balance this out. What could we do? Okay, christmas is coming up, let's do something that will help the optimistic kid be brought down a little bit. He's just like overly Pollyanna and the other kid to be more optimistic. And so they gave all of these amazing gifts, got the child who was pessimistic absolutely every single thing that he wanted, and plopped a giant pile of horse manure in the backyard with a bow on top, intending to give it to the overly optimistic kid. Well, christmas morning happened and the child, who got every single thing that he wanted on his list, still had complaints. Well, this isn't really as big as I thought it would be. Well, that doesn't look like I'm really going to have that much fun. I just started playing with it. I'm already bored.

Speaker 1:

And the optimistic kid goes over and starts throwing poop left and right, digging, digging, digging. And the parents are like what are you doing? And he says, with a pile this big, there's got to be a pony somewhere. I think we all want to have that kid that is the poop thrower looking for the pony and that just sees the positive in everything. That would make our role as a parent so much easier, of course, and yet some kids are just innately more like the child that is seeing the flaw in everything that can be a positive in their world. That over time, that's something that may impact them being a realist and very evaluative of situations, scrutinizing appropriately. But Again, it's hard for us when we're their parent and we can often see that as a judgment of like they're ungrateful, so or they're just not having enough spark, enough resilience. So, friend, today, first of all, I want to just say let's parent the child we've got, not the child we've ought. If we have that child that is more prone to pessimism. We're going to get some tools today and we want to start with acceptance that this child just by nature, tends to see things in these negative ways. That doesn't mean anything's wrong with them. It just means this is the muscle we want to help this child builds, the muscle of being able to see things a little differently, a little differently, a little more with some optimism. We don't need to give them every single thing to try to do it.

Speaker 1:

One way I hear parents trying to solve their problem of a negative thinking child is to make them happier. Like I try to give them everything that they want. They really were looking forward to this or that, and so I try to give it to them, and then it just never really makes them happy. It seems like they're still upset no matter what I do, and yet the parents doing more, and resentful that that's not solving things. So I want to encourage you to not go that direction for solving things. Just thinking something you'll do will cause them to be happier because they'll finally get what they want doesn't generally solve this issue. What does solve the issue is what I'm going to offer you today about ants.

Speaker 1:

Before we dive into that, though, I want to tell you how butternut squash changed my life. Butternut squash changed my life because when I had my son I, when he was about a year and a half, he was eating more solids and one of his favorite things was butternut squash, and I would cook it often, like make it, so that I could cut the thing in half, scoop out the insides, put it in the oven and then chop it into squares. Well, this was actually becoming super laborious, because I would do it the way I just described, which then led to me trying to, like scoop out the fruit from the peel after it was cooked and it would really stick and it was not super easy. But I was like that's just what you have to do. Life is just hard. You do what you have to do for your kids. But guess what, one day my sister-in-law was visiting. Bless her heart, love you, olivia. She said to me Flora, did you know like you can peel the butternut squash before you cook it and like cube everything. So then after it's cooked it's just set and done with how you're trying to have it in the end anyways. And at first I was almost like offended that I hadn't thought of that myself sooner. But then I went with her advice and it changed my life and made things so much easier and take less time.

Speaker 1:

I tell you that story because these thoughts that I'm going to offer you the solutions today may feel like I'm giving you the idea of peeling butternut squash. Like oh, why didn't I think of that before? That seems really simple and yet it just isn't what we always first think of. We don't always see our blind spots. Same for our kids. When we first suggest these types of solutions, you may get pushed back Like you don't understand it's not going to be that easy and that's okay. Just say you're right, this is just a different way of approaching it, and maybe you'll do it today, maybe you'll do it tomorrow, I don't know, but you know I'm. I think there's an opportunity here for life to feel easier and feel different. I think there's an opportunity here for life to feel easier and feel different. I encourage you to have that kind of attitude as you give this idea to your child.

Speaker 1:

So the power of ants. I promised you at the beginning I would share the power of ants, coined by Daniel Amen, who is the leading brain psychologist with both children and adults on how to have a thriving brain to help you to do your best. And ANTS stands for automatic negative thoughts, and he found that there are some patterns that both adults and children can fall into that make them more prone to be stuck in those places of nobody likes me I'll never be good at this, I'm so stupid. So here's the good news Ants lose their power when we shine light on them. You can teach your child to notice when an ant is crawling into their mind and you may be able to say something like oh, sounds like an ant just showed up. Let's catch it before it makes itself at home so we can sort of externalize those negative thoughts as not a part of the child but something that they can protect themselves from and send away. So when we spot an ant, we want to teach our kids how to squash it or shine light on it.

Speaker 1:

For instance, the ant of I'm terrible at soccer can be shifted into a yet mindset. One of the first key tools that I find really shifts negative thoughts and is proven again and again through research is the power of yet Putting the word yet at the end of whatever the child just said. You're not feeling great at soccer yet. Part two you can add to that is a progressive mindset of what do you think it might take to be where you want to be in soccer. So I'm not feeling that great at soccer yet and in order to get there blank, I want to practice more. I want to watch videos on how the experts became good at soccer. I'm going to watch YouTube videos. What is it going to be If a child says nobody wants to play with me? A wonderful opposite to that automatic negative thought is teaching them how to hold an and Like those kids may not want to play with me and what else is also true. Are there other kids who might want to play with you? Are you happy sometimes when you just choose to play with yourself, play by yourself? What else could be the and option? That is true, and what else could be true? Instead of seeing it as nobody trying to go to, those individuals are not choosing to play with me.

Speaker 1:

So, taking away from always, never everyone, no one, getting away from those big global words is another ant to catch and make it a family practice of looking at how we can add yet to the things we're not good at. Looking at what would be the steps to get better to the things we're not good at. Looking at what would be the steps to get better at the things we're not good at. Looking for ways to take away always, never everyone, no one. And adding in the word and whenever possible. Those are the four main tools that I want you to be taking away from today and if you're wanting your child to practice them in their vocabulary, in their thinking process, the more you can demonstrate using those, the better.

Speaker 1:

So, friend, I hope these tools will empower you to be able to have better outcomes with your kids when automatic negative thoughts or ants are coming up for them, and if you have struggled for a bit with a child with negative thinking and not been able to progress, that is something I love to help parents with. I have many clients that I've helped in the past where their child was stuck in negative thinking and we were able to make changes. You can connect with me on a clarity call for that work by going to the bottom of the show description and seeing where the link is for a clarity call. And please join me next week as I'll be with a special guest diving into the topic of couples and how we can help improve our relationships as we're parenting. See you then.