For my son things came easy as a young child. All through grade school he cruised on talent alone. We even moved schools when things were too easy and the principal of his school said, “sorry we can’t challenge your child. We only teach to the test.” But all that changed in high school.
My son started struggling in school, first with Spanish, then with math. His talent alone wouldn’t get him through these classes and he didn’t know what to do. Eventually we found great tutors for both, and over the course of the year he managed to fight his way through. And that he found was the most valuable lesson of all.
For my son, he learned that smarts, or talent alone wasn’t enough. He had to grow to learn and needed to find new ways to tackle challenges. This is called a “growth mindset”, coined by Carol Dweck and popularized by Angela Duckworth in her TED talk.
In short, a growth mindset is one where we believe our brain and our abilities are like a muscle, in that if we exercise and challenge them, they will grow. The opposite is a fixed mindset where one believes that intelligence is fixed…you are smart, or you are not.
Dweck’s research points to the benefits and advantages of a growth mindset, where hard work outweighs pure talent. As parents this means we want to encourage hard work in our kids and we can do this by praising the work, and not the talent.
For instance, if your child comes home with an “A” on their spelling test, a typical response of praise may be “Great job honey, you’re so smart”. Which seems perfectly appropriate. However, we are then labeling the child as smart and in effect, fixing their mindset. The better praise would be something like “Great job honey, I know how hard you worked on studying for that.” Where we praise the work and encourage the child to connect work with the results, not just their innate talent.
As my son is now in his junior year of High School, the demands of school have increased dramatically. However, he is thriving and working harder than ever and actually complaining less. Having seen the results of his work, and I think with some mindful praise on the part of my wife and I, he believes through working, his abilities can grow and he can excel. And this is a trait that will serve him throughout his education and beyond.
