What Does a "High Hoper" Look Like?
A high-hope child has the ideas, the plans, and the motivation to make things happen. These youngsters are energetic in the moment and excited about the future. Hopeful children are not sitting on the sidelines. They are busy creating pathways to achieve goals and they are filled with the determination to succeed, thereby actively engaging in life and all its possibilities. Through interacting with the world, they are able to acquire the tools and resources they need to successfully navigate their lives. They may even create a hope domino effect that gets their friends and family members involved in hopeful goal pursuits.

Teaching Hope
Getting children talking about hope is as easy as asking them a few questions and discussing the answers:

1. What are your hopes and dreams? Which one is most important to you right now?
2. What are all the ways you can think about to make your most important dream come true?
3. Who makes you feel like you matter? How will their love and support help make your dream come true?

In programs designed to increase hopeful thinking, group leaders help children refine their goals by making them more clear and specific (so that they can be visualized) and additive (so that the goal adds something to life, like good behavior, rather than taking away something bad, like poor behavior). Children enjoy talking about their goals and making them more dynamic. Pathways thinking encourages children to name each and every path toward their goal. In the exercise, when leaders "block" some pathways, children are encouraged to come up with more ideas.and they always do. Agency thinking is the most difficult hope skill to teach, but leaders are able to do so by emphasizing the social support in the child's life and by building excitement about the future. Having children imagine that their favorite loved one is tagging along on their goal pursuit, or that the special person will be pleased when the goal is reached, can give that extra boost of mental energy when needed.

When helping your child become more hopeful, keep in mind that you are teaching a set of skills that build on what children do naturally, thinking about the future. With a little help, children can learn how to describe important goals in terms that are clear and specific and add something to their lives. Pathways thinking grows as children generate more and more routes that will take them from Point A to Point B in the short term and long term. Finally, with some love and caring and a short track record of personal success, children can stay motivated when pursuing goals.

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