Parenting, the Fixed vs. Growth Mindset and Why Thinking I Was Dumb Helped
Why certain compliments may be hurting your kids.
Three little vignettes that tie together.
1. I grew up with a bunch of smart kids. I mean, really smart. Somehow I tested into the “gifted & talented” program (GATE) in my local school district, so at the start of 2nd grade, I hopped onto a bus at my neighborhood school and went a few miles down to the nearest GATE school. And from 2nd grade through college, I was surrounded by kids with immense natural intelligence. I distinctly remember a suffocating feeling as I grew up with these kids: I’m not as bright as them. Now, no one told me this, made me feel this way, or otherwise led to this low self-esteem. In fact, I was surrounded by encouraging, thoughtful adults who all affirmed me. And none of the other kids said or did anything to make me feel this way. It’s just, well, how I felt.
2. Carol Dweck is a Stanford University psychologist who wrote a fantastic book called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Dweck argues that there are two mindsets we can have in life: fixed and growth. The fixed mindset says, “I am only as good as what I was born with,” and the growth mindset says, “I can improve in this particular area of my life.” And it’s very possible to cycle between these two mindsets depending on the topic. (Example: “I’ll never be a good speller,” but “more time on the driving range is all I need to improve my game.”)
3. My school-age children are (and were) fascinating to watch and listen to. Mainly because they’re my kids, and when you’re a parent, most things your kids do are interesting to you and no one else. But also because once I absorbed Dweck’s book, I started hearing my kids’ mindsets quite clearly. For example, when he was in elementary school, I overheard my son telling another boy about his recent success in a baseball game. He apparently wanted this other boy to think he was a natural hitter because of this isolated result. There was no talk of what might happen the next time he’s up, nor did he attribute this hit to practice. Nope, it was pure, raw, unadulterated natural talent (or so he wanted his buddy to think.)
Dweck devotes a good portion of her book to mindset regarding raising and educating children. As you can imagine, study after study shows that a growth mindset is far healthier than a fixed mindset. So, how do we “teach” our kids to develop a growth mindset? Dweck covers this extensively, but one of her essential suggestions is to compliment the effort and practice, not the innate gift. If Sally does well on her math test, don’t tell her how good she is at math or how smart she is, but ask her how she approached the test and prepared, and then compliment her for working hard and learning the curriculum.
This brings me back to this: I am so thankful for feeling dumb growing up. OK, maybe not “dumb,” per se, but “not as smart.”
I remember entering the architecture department at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo as a barely 18-year-old kid and realizing, “Oh my, all of these kids are smarter than me.” I mean, these kids were all top of their high school class, all scored 20% higher than me on their SATs, and to top it all off, they were nice. Damn, them! If you’re nice, I can’t hate you. Stop being nice!
I realized my only survival choice was to work as hard as possible. And that mindset, the inferiority combined with the notion that I could get better, is the key non-spiritual contributor to my professional life.
The question becomes this: how do my wife and I foster this attitude in our kids? For us, it means letting them fail. It means complimenting their hard work and not just their natural gifts. It means putting them in difficult situations and helping them succeed. It also means putting them in difficult situations and allowing them to fail. It means teaching them how to work, even if they complain about it, because hard work is, well, hard. It means encouraging them to try new things, things they may not be good at, instead of letting them focus just on things in which they are naturally gifted. It means helping them realize they’re rarely going to be the smartest, biggest, strongest, fastest, cutest, or anything-est. And it means teaching them how to use this realization to their full advantage.
Books of Note: Well, obviously, Carol Dweck's Mindset has to be the takeaway on this post, right?
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