Why Positivity Isn’t About Being Nice — It’s About Building Resilient Kids. Every parenting book talks about positivity. But for parents of complex, neurodiverse kids, positivity means something more specific than being upbeat or nice, and understanding that difference is the second cornerstone Elaine Taylor-Klaus and Diane Dempster teach in Sanity School® for Parents.

Why does every parenting model talk about positivity?

Because it strengthens relationships and lightens an already hard job. Diane points out that our brains are wired to scan for what’s broken and predict what could go wrong, which is an important survival mechanism. Positivity is the counterweight. Elaine connects this to the field of positive psychology, which has shown that focusing on what’s working, instead of only what isn’t, positively changes how people are able to move forward and make decisions in their lives.

What does resilience have to do with positivity?

Resilience, not intelligence, is the strongest predictor of a kid’s long-term success. Kids develop resilience by believing there’s at least one adult in their corner who sees them, holds them, and believes in them. When kids lose hope, Elaine and Diane explain, they often look like they don’t care—but that disengagement is usually a symptom of lost hope, not apathy. The work of positivity is holding a vision of capability for a kid even when they can’t hold it for themselves yet.

What’s the “independence pyramid”?

Elaine describes a framework taught in this cornerstone module: the independence pyramid. The relationship is the foundation. Trust sits on top of the relationship. Communication sits on top of trust. Everything else you want your kid to do rests on whether those three layers are solid.

How do I communicate in a way that actually connects?

Diane emphasizes that communication isn’t just about what you say, it’s what your kid hears—that means your tone, your timing, and your body language. Elaine shares a story from a mother-daughter workshop she once ran, where parents watched their own tone of voice completely change the impact of a simple line like “put your backpack on the table.” The goal of communication isn’t just delivering information, it’s fostering connection without slipping into judgment, blame, or shame.

What about the way we talk to ourselves?

Elaine and Diane close on self-talk, which Elaine calls a form of self-care. She shares that after her own ADHD diagnosis in her 40s, she realized she’d spent years motivating herself by “beating herself over the head with a stick”, and how consciously changing that internal dialogue changed her relationship with her own mistakes.

This is part two of a four-part series on the Sanity School® cornerstones. The first part tackled activating your child’s brain, executive function, emotion, and motivation.

Next up: shifting expectations.

What to expect in this episode:

• Why being positive isn’t the same as being nice, and why that distinction matters for parenting complex kids
• Why resilience, not intelligence, is the biggest predictor of a kid’s long-term success, and how to build it
• What the “independence pyramid” is, and why relationship, trust, and communication have to come in that order
• How tone, timing, and what your kid actually hears (versus what you meant) shape every conversation
• Why self-talk is a form of self-care, and how changing your own internal dialogue changes how you show up for your kid

Positivity and Communication: The Second Cornerstone of Parenting Complex Kids

Related Links:

• Parenting & Hope: Helping Kids Navigate an Uncertain Future
• Get Curious, Not Furious: A Better Way to Parent Complex Kids
• Family Meetings for Better Communication, Trust, and Connection
• Rebuilding Trust with Teens: Cleaning the Slate Conversations
• How Do I Get My Kids to Talk to Me? 4 Communication Tools
• The Surprising Challenges of a Strengths-Based Approach

Our Discussion

Elaine:
Have you ever thought about the fact that being nice is not the same thing as being positive? That in fact, sometimes you can be positive and not always be so nice. Like it’s not the same thing. And you know, all parenting methods teach positivity as a fundamental component, and that’s true. Being positive is really critical, and when your kids have complex issues, it might just show up a little differently than you expect. So in this episode, let’s talk about positivity and… Well, I’ll tell you in a minute. Welcome back, everybody, to another conversation in the Parenting with Impact podcast. Diane, it’s time to talk about the second cornerstone in our phenomenal model. Are you ready to give away the secret?

Diane:
Well, I am, and well, just the reminder is that this is part of a four-part series. It’s four cornerstones that we teach in our foundational parent training program, Sanity School, and this is the second one, which is called Positivity and…

Elaine:
Communication.

Diane:
Right. So it’s not just about being nice. It’s also about how you interact and engage, as humans.

Elaine:
Yeah. So, if we pull back, like, why is it that every single parenting paradigm and every program in the entire world talks about positivity?

Diane:
Well, I think it’s because if you don’t, and it, it kind of goes back to the relationship piece of this, it’s this sort of if you… If I’m talking to someone that I don’t have a relationship with, my interaction with them is gonna be so different than somebody who I do have a relationship with. And if we’re in a relationship, part of that is, like, what are the things that really strengthen and foster that relationship, and not just, how do I get the stuff done that we need to get done, right? And so to me, positivity is in there for that reason, because it strengthens a relationship. And then the other piece of it is that, you know, it’s exhausting to live in a world where things are hard and troublesome and, you know, stressful. And so that energy of positivity helps, makes life lighter, which makes it less likely that people are gonna get upset and dysregulated. It’s not gonna prevent it, but maybe less likely. And life is hard. Why not make it as light as we can? Do you have a different perspective?

Elaine:
It’s related for sure. I think, I mean, there’s a lot of research now. Like, in our lifetime there has developed in the field of psychology an entire subdivision of psychology called positive psychology. Right? And, and it was created and developed because the research started to show us what a difference it makes for people in their lives when we look at the bright side, when we look at what’s working instead of only what’s not working, when we look at what’s possible instead of what we’re afraid of. Positivity is about- It’s not always about being Pollyanna and not seeing the bad stuff. But it’s about reframing our perspective so that we can look for what’s working and look for the possibility of making things better. When we start all of our groups and our coaching sessions and our coaching groups and our trainings, we always start with celebrations because it sets the stage for us to look for what’s positive and what’s working when we do that. And, the research has really borne out in every arena, in the workplace, in families, that positivity sets the tone for how people move forward with making decisions in their lives.

Diane:
Well, I wanna highlight something you said. You said instead of… Well, we wanna focus on the positive instead of only focusing on the other stuff, right? And I think that the other place where I think science has proved this out, is that our brains are wired to look for what’s broken. Our brains are wired to predict what terrible thing might happen and protect us from it. I mean, that is literally what the brain is designed to do. And so there’s a medicine in saying, “Okay, and if it’s gonna do that no matter what, how do I keep myself balanced enough so that I can keep going and not just be bombarded with all these, ‘Oh my gosh, what if this happened? And what if that happened? And what if this happened? And what if this is terrible? And what if that is terrible?'”

Elaine:
Yeah.

Diane:
We would never survive as a species, I don’t think.

Elaine:
never get out of bed.

Diane:
So, our brain is doing this stuff naturally, and so focusing on positivity is the balancing act it brings to it. The counterweight. I love that, yeah.

Elaine:
Yeah. It really is. And what you made me think about, there was… So several years ago, I was at a, I was speaking at a positive psychology conference, and there was a keynoter who I was so taken by. It was a big keynote to a big audience, and he is one of the leading world researchers in the future. He’s a futurist. His name is Andreas Croft. And they did all of this research on hope and the future and how people think. And it wasn’t about kids or parenting or anything. It was general, and all over the world. And what their research showed, his takeaway for this entire audience, was how important it is for parents to hold vision and hope for their kids. Because what they learned in the research is that when people feel positivity and hope, they have a sense of feeling that they can move forward. And when people get stuck in fear and overwhelm, it feels like the world is coming at them and they’re more likely to feel stuck and frozen. Which I think happens with our kids a lot. We don’t realize how afraid they are or worried they are or overwhelmed they are. And so that ability to create a vision of hope and possibility allows people to feel the capacity to move and change and create something different in their life. And I love that that’s what the leading world research came to, was how important it is to think in terms of hope and positivity. And there is a podcast episode with him, by the way, ’cause he was fabulous and he agreed to come talk to us on the podcast, so I highly recommend it and I’ll link to it.

Diane:
So the word that’s coming up as you’re saying that is resilience, right? And I think that that’s another place where the research has proven that resilience is the most big, the largest predictor of future success for kids, is, you know, that if we build resilient kids, then it’s a great predictor of how they will do in life. And the tool underneath it, which is like how do you build a resilient kid?

Elaine:
You have one person in their life who believes in them. The most research shows that the greatest indicator of lifetime success is resilience more than intelligence. And that resilience comes when a kid believes that there’s at least one adult in their corner, one person who sees them, holds them, and believes in them.

Diane:
Cause that- It’s like hope, right? And I can’t tell you how many times it’s like I forget about this, but so many times parents will end up in our circle, in our community, on our phones, and it’s like they have lost hope. And so finding a way to reconnect, whether it’s you or your kid, I mean, I think that that’s the piece of it. If parents look at their kids and they’re like, “My kid doesn’t care. My kid’s over here doing something else,” it’s a lot of times our kids appear as if they don’t care, or they even behave that they, don’t care, or they act like they… Or they say, “I don’t care,” because they’ve lost hope.

Elaine:
Yeah.

Diane:
They don’t know how to fix this thing, which is their brain. Go back and listen to the last episode where we talk about activating the brain. They don’t know how to fix it. They lose hope- They have a really hard time even engaging

Elaine:
Well, and, you know, and I said this to a group the other day, to one of our coaching groups, like, if they don’t… If we don’t believe they can, it’s gonna make it a whole lot harder for them to believe they can. So we’ve, we’ve gotta do our work to figure out what they can do and what’s possible for them instead of holding them to their limitations, which it’s really easy to do. I think the medical model kind of reinforces this broken thing, and these kids aren’t broken. They’re complicated. And, there’s so much capacity for them. When we hold them to their capacity, they see themselves as capable, as beginning to see themselves as capable of reaching it. And that’s what positivity is really about. It’s about creating an environment for them to see themselves and their own capacity, and to believe that they can actually succeed in life. Cause a lot of our kids really struggle with that, right?

Diane:
It’s a great place to take a break.

Elaine:
Okay, let’s do it.

Elaine:
Welcome back everybody. We are talking about the second cornerstone in the Impact Model, what we call positivity and communication. And really up until now, we’ve been talking, Diane, about positivity, and hope, and vision, and holding a vision for our kids, and helping them see their capacity. And we teach a lot of tools and techniques and ways that parents can do that. Because if we’re not … Like, what I learned was that I thought I was doing that, but I was kind of undermining my kid by doing … The way I was saying it wasn’t useful. And so even though I thought I was saying, “You can do this,” what they were getting was this message of, you know, they didn’t believe they could. And so then they … And not only did they feel like they couldn’t, but then they were also feeling like they were disappointing me. So I had to learn how to communicate with them in a way that really empowered them and really fostered their sense of self, right? And so that’s, in this half of the episode, we really wanna talk about the importance of communication. What do you wanna say?

Diane:
Well, I think I kind of wanna go back and say, you know, the pieces that we didn’t say about positivity is also strengths-based, right? It’s this sort of, that’s the other part of what you were just describing, is like if these kids spend so much time looking at what’s broken or what doesn’t work as opposed to paying attention to what does work, that’s the other piece that I don’t think we mentioned that I think is important to that hope resilience cycle that we planted the seed around.

Elaine:
Because strength and strength-based ties into our ability to communicate effectively and help people see what they can do instead of what they can’t, right?

Diane:
Right. So the reminder about communication is that there’s so many different parts of this. It’s what we say, it’s what we don’t say, it’s what our body language is, it’s how they interpret what we say. I mean, there’s all these different pieces of this. And for me, the focus on communication is, like, noticing and paying attention to it. Like, what am I saying? What are they hearing? Right? This happens all the time. It’s like parents are like, “I wanna change the way I’m parenting. I wanna be more positive. I wanna be less transactional. I don’t wanna be judgy. I’ve spent so much time trying to get my kids to do stuff, and I wanna shift that and be more connected.” And their kids are, like, secretly in there looking for the trick because mom’s been judging them, or they’ve been feeling like mom or dad has been judging them for years. And so a big part of the communication is what they’re hearing, even if it’s not the same as what we’re saying.

Elaine:
Right. Yeah. We talk about the four parts of communication. That’s a really important little framework and, there’s something about, like, as you were saying that, what I was remembering was when one of my kids was little, I used to do this mother-daughter class thing that I created at their school, ’cause my kid was being bullied. And so I dealt with it by another girl in the class. And so I dealt with it by creating a mother-daughter group with the school so that we could meet together and so I was doing this activity with the kids where the kids would stand in front of the room, and I would, And everybody was saying the same thing, which was, “Put your backpack on the table,” or something like that. And I would give them a different tone to say it. “Say it angry, say it snarky, say it happy, say it sad.” And the, the kids were doing it, and the parents were in the audience listening, and the you could watch the parents start to cringe as they heard their tone of voice influencing, what it did to influence something simple like, “Put your backpack on the table.” Right? And so one of the things we talk about a lot in communication is, you know, is not just the parts of communication, but how do we communicate in a way that really fosters connection and avoids what you’re saying, that doesn’t move into judgment, that doesn’t leave people feeling, blamed or shamed or anything else, but how do we say things in a way that lightens the tone and improves their self-esteem and their self-concept?

Diane:
Well, and that takes me back to the strengths-based thing we just talked about, but it also takes me back to relationship first, that we were talking about at the very beginning. It’s this sort of if I have a healthy relationship with someone, my ability to say something difficult to them is gonna be very different than someone who I’ve already got a fractured relationship with. And whether, a lot of us are in fractured relationships with our kids. A lot of our kids are in fractured relationships with themselves.

Elaine:
Yeah.

Diane:
And a lot of us are in fractured relationships with ourselves, and the language we use is trust, right? It’s this sort of we fall out of trust with ourselves, or they fall out of trust with us. They fall out of trust with themselves. And so it’s an important piece to know I gotta connect to communicate. Or I get to connect to communicate is, we might say it that way. What would you add?

Elaine:
Well, one of the things we teach in this particular cornerstone module is what we call the independence pyramid, and it’s a pyramid of what it takes to get a kid to independence, and the very foundation of it is relationship, and on top of relationship sits trust, and on that sits communication. So those are your foundations, and all the rest of the stuff you want them to do or not do or anything else all of that is gonna really rely on whether you’ve got that core foundation of relationship in place and trust in place. And that, a lot of us, as Diane said, we have not… We’ve fallen out of it. We need to find our path back into it, You can do that. There are techniques. There’s communication techniques, conversation techniques. I was actually talking, Diane, recently to a young adult support group that Ada runs, and what they were really fascinated by was I was talking about that their parents are, really want for them and really are trying to communicate with them, but that their parents are afraid, and it’s coming out in ways that feel challenging, and it’s challenging the communication. And so I taught them a technique that we teach in Sanity School. I taught them the design so that they could talk about how they, how do they talk to their parents in a way that doesn’t trigger defensiveness, right?

Diane:
Well, and it’s like, and I was talking to a group of parents twice this week, and it came up, and it’s a lot of times as parents we avoid conversations because we’re afraid of the reaction, right? It’s this sort of if we’ve been in a situation where somebody’s blown up about something we’ve said, it’s like we just stop even mentioning it because we don’t, it doesn’t feel safe, or we don’t wanna put them into dang- I mean, sometimes these kids are, are in situations where there’s self-harm, and some of these situations are just big emotions and so we go into avoidance mode.

Elaine:
Right.

Diane:
So part of this is- How do we set it up well so that we can have conversations and not just what are the conversations?

Elaine:
Right. And so there’s, part of it is, setting the tone, setting the environment, building the trust, building the relationship, and then part of it is the techniques in the conversation, right? Like, we have a bunch of like, whether it’s, we call something breadcrumbs or design. There’s some techniques that really allow you to improve the way the conversations are happening, and I think that’s really important because I think a lot of us, we fall back into old patterns. We fall back into family of origin patterns. And you know, I don’t know about you, but you come out of a conversation that’s like, “Wow, that did not go as well as I wanted to.” And there are little tweaks that we can make, sometimes really nuanced to really have those conversations go as well as we want them to. And it means we have to understand and kind of be the leader of that.

Diane:
and it’s not just the what of the conversation, but it’s the when of the conversation I think is important.

Elaine:
When and how,

Diane:
You mentioned breadcrumbs, but it’s like how often… I was talking, again, the same group yesterday, and as parents it’s like, okay, all day long we’ve been thinking about this thing, and our kids are off at school, and we’re like, “Oh, when our kid gets home I gotta talk to them about this thing,” and it’s like we hit the door. We hit the door and we pounce, and it’s like, okay, like, and all of a sudden the kid’s like, “Whoa, wait a second. All I can think about is that, you know, this thing that happened at school, and I gotta get on the, on Instagram”

Elaine:
Or I wanna see my friends.

Diane:
Yeah, exactly. And so it’s, you know, part of it is knowing and trusting, like, the, the right and perfect time to have a conversation rather than, oh my gosh, I gotta have this immediately or I’m gonna forget, or they’re gonna forget, or the world’s gonna end, or whatever it is that’s going through our nervous system, right?

Elaine:
Or that sometimes the conversation we wanna have may have a bunch of little components to it. A lot of the time we think, “I need to sit down and talk about that,” and the truth is if we can spread it out we actually might be more effective at the conversation. So before we wrap up on this episode, the other thing I wanna talk about, and there’s an exercise in Sanity School that week about it, is how we talk to ourselves.

Diane:
Mm, yeah.

Elaine:
So we’re talking about communication, and I am a firm believer that self-talk is a kind of self-care, right? There’s a chapter, there’s a section in every chapter of the book, of the Essential Guide, on self-talk is self-care. Because how we talk to ourselves matters, and how our kids talk to themselves matters. And so I really wanna kind of raise our awareness to how important it is to think about not just the communication that we have outside, but the communication that we have inside.

Diane:
Well, and, and so much of that, it’s like some of us are aware of the bully in our head, and some of us are not. And some of us, it’s, we’ve lived with them for so long that we stop…
You know, we are only secretly listening to them, and part of this is just even recognizing and acknowledging, like, how often do you notice that voice in your head and you’re like, “Oh, I would never talk to a friend that way.” “I would never talk to somebody I care about that way.” And yet, how many of us are in there beating ourselves up or judging or criticizing or whatever it is.

Elaine:
You know when I’ve got an article I’m gonna link to in the show notes that I wrote about that years ago, about the bully within, taming the bully within. But when I first learned about my ADHD in my 40s, and I started understanding it and beginning to manage it, one of the things that happens to a lot of adults with ADD is that we’ve gotten ourselves to adulthood by, what I say, beating ourselves over the head with a stick, right?
We have beat ourselves up in order to be successful, to accomplish. And it’s not that it doesn’t work, it’s just not a very positive way to motivate ourselves.

Diane:
It’s exhausting, too.

Elaine:
It’s exhausting. Like, we have this well-worn groove in our head from years of beating ourselves up. And so the first thing I committed to myself when I started getting into coaching and being coached was to put the stick down. And I often get parents to go outside and find a stick and put it on their desk or put it in their kitchen or their bathroom or whatever. But to put the stick down is such a powerful way, and for me, what I did, the first thing I did was I stopped saying, “You’re such an idiot.” ‘Cause my refrain, whenever I would make a mistake, I’d say, “Ugh, you’re such an idiot,” to myself, which was not very nice, right? But it’s kind of how I motivated myself most of my life. And so I consciously changed that default and that changed my ability to be with my mistakes and to stop beating myself up so much. So self-talk, I think, I just wanna give a plug here for how important it is to communicate more effectively with everyone, including with ourselves, and that’s really what we cover in module two of Sanity School, in that second cornerstone. So are we wrapped for this conversation?

Diane:
We are. We covered a lot.

Elaine:
Okay. So capture for yourself. What’s your takeaway? What’s your insight? What’s your aha? What did we talk about in this last 20 minutes that feels resonant for you, that was an insight for you or an affirmation, like affirmed something that you were, you felt or thought or knew? Like, what is it that you’re taking away from today that you might wanna bring forward with you into your life? And maybe there’s an action you wanna take. If you wanna find out more about Sanity School, we’ll have that in the show notes. That’s available for you if that’s something you’re interested in. Is there a conversation you wanna have? Do you wanna find out more about conversation techniques? Maybe go to the website. What do you wanna do with this information? Anything else? As next up on the podcast, we’re gonna be doing the third cornerstone, right? Shifting expectations. We’re gonna keep going through the cornerstones. And if you like what you’re hearing, please take a minute to like or follow or subscribe or leave us a review. We really appreciate it. It helps us reach more people. And as always, thanks for what you’re doing for yourself and for your kids. You make an extraordinary difference, and we appreciate you being here, being part of the conversation with us to make a difference for you and your kids. Take care everybody.