Wondered if you had read "The Optimistic Child"? (M. Seligman). We're doing a course based on the book with DD 7 and DD 4, and have started implementing the program at home. Seligman's objective is to try and immunise kids against depression by giving kids the skills to be more optimistic. I found the book to be really wonderful. We use the red light/green light thought concept a lot, and it's good to be able to challenge unhelpful thoughts in a constructive and practical way (such as "I can't do this. I'm never going to be able to do fractions. It's stupid. I want to quit!"). The link between thoughts and feelings is really helpful too. Just by having a framework for thinking about feel good friends and feel bad friends means that DD 7 now knows how to talk about incidences that happen at school with me. I highly recommend the book... jojo
