How to Make Sure Your Kids Have ‘Grit,’ Backed by Research

As soon as a growth mindset became a desirable thing to have, many people started saying they had it. If they were open minded and flexible, they said they had a growth mindset. If they were kind to people, they said they had a growth mindset. A growth mindset is not something you declare, it’s a really difficult journey you take over a long period of time.

When people are in a fixed mindset they believe their basic qualities, their talents, abilities, intelligence are just fixed traits, they have a certain amount and that’s it. When they’re in this mindset they often become concerned with how much they have. “If I do this will I look smart? Will I feel smart? Will people think I’m talented or not?” When people are in a growth mindset, they look at their talent and abilities as things that can be developed through hard work, good strategies, or help and input from others. They’re more willing to jump in, take a challenge, and roll with the punches because they’re not seeing everything as reflecting on their deep permanent ability.

Students with the fixed mindset stayed interested only when they did well right away. Those who found it difficult showed a big drop in their interest and enjoyment. If it wasn’t a testimony to their intelligence, they couldn’t enjoy it.

When people are in a growth mindset they’re more willing to take on challenging tasks. They’re more engaged by mistakes or setbacks rather than discouraged. They delve into a mistake, they process it, they correct it. They’re more inspired by people who are better than they are, instead of intimidated and discouraged. In many of our studies we see that they achieve more in the long run.

In Study 1 with 373 7th graders, the belief that intelligence is malleable (incremental theory) predicted an upward trajectory in grades over the two years of junior high school, while a belief that intelligence is fixed (entity theory) predicted a flat trajectory.

Compared to no-treatment and coping skills control groups, the incremental theory group behaved significantly less aggressively and more prosocially 1 month postintervention and exhibited fewer conduct problems 3 months postintervention.

One of the most intriguing things we’re finding now is that there isn’t a strong relationship between parents mindsets and their kids. Many parents may have a growth mindset but it’s not visible to their kids. They need to really focus on the child’s process, their strategies, their hard work, their use of resources and tie it to the child’s improvement instead of focusing on the child’s ability or just the outcome.

A lot of our work shows focusing on the child’s ability, even complimenting the child’s ability, can make the child feel, “Oh, it’s fixed and you’re proud of me for that reason” and they may stop taking on challenges or they may see errors as serious.

…six studies demonstrated that praise for intelligence had more negative consequences for students’ achievement motivation than praise for effort. Fifth graders praised for intelligence were found to care more about performance goals relative to learning goals than children praised for effort. After failure, they also displayed less task persistence, less task enjoyment, more low-ability attributions, and worse task performance than children praised for effort.

Remember that praising children’s intelligence or talent, tempting as it is, sends a fixed-mindset message. It makes their confidence and motivation more fragile. Instead, try to focus on the processes they used— their strategies, effort, or choices. Practice working the process praise into your interactions with your children.

Now a lot of parents have interpreted this as meaning always praise the effort and not the outcome. That’s an oversimplification because it’s not just effort, it’s also strategies and use of resources. It’s not “ignore the outcome,” it’s “tie it to the outcome.” Sometimes parents will say, “I’m so tempted to be happy when my child succeeds or masters something difficult but I know I shouldn’t,” and of course you should. Just tie it to the process, that what the child is supposed to learn is that a good process results in progress.

The other thing we’re seeing in our research is that the way parents respond to a child’s errors, mistakes, and failures is critically important. Many parents may have a growth mindset but they might worry that if their child experiences failure they’ll be harmed or lose their confidence and so they tend to gloss over or get a little anxious and the child picks up on that. What we’re finding is that it’s the parents who really respond positively to the child’s mistakes that show how they’re an opportunity for learning. Then the child sees that these setbacks are part of the learning process, and you can capitalize on them. They’re not something that should engender anxiety or make you feel inept.

Just seeing a growth mindset as focusing on effort and merely exhorting kids to try hard — since when was that ever effective? It’s more like nagging than instruction, so exhorting kids to work hard is not a growth mindset. It doesn’t teach them about strategies and it doesn’t teach them that their brain grows new connections when they do something hard and stick to it… In general, goals should be challenging but doable and there should be steps along the way so that the child can see that what they’re doing is bringing progress. It’s very rewarding to see yourself progressing toward the goal. Then when the child reaches the goal, the parent can review what it was that the child did, that whole process that led to the learning.

One thing to keep in mind is that if a coach teaches a growth mindset with respect to athletics it may not go anywhere else other than athletics. These mindsets can stay very anchored to a particular situation. We see many athletes who are tremendously persevering and risk taking and learning oriented in athletics but not in their academic work and vice versa. If we want our growth mindset teaching to have a maximum effect than we should tie it to other things.

We should ask ourselves every day “What do I want to learn today?” and “What do I want to teach today?”, or “What do I want to facilitate in others?” That just keeps us in a learning mode. We’re all so busy, we have so many responsibilities and we have to keep learning the idea of learning in the front of our minds. Then, even at the dinner table, parents can talk about things they struggled with, mistakes they made and learned from and that could become part of the dinner conversation.

Every word and action from parent to child sends a message. Tomorrow, listen to what you say to your kids and tune in to the messages you’re sending. Are they messages that say: “You have permanent traits and I’m judging them?” Or are they messages that say “You’re a developing person and I’m interested in your development?”

Kids in my research studies would say things like, “I love a challenge” when I was giving them problems they couldn’t solve. It made me think, “Wow, they really like failure. How is that possible? Is that something I could learn too?” Over time, through my work, I took on more and more challenges. Some of them panned out, some of them didn’t, but I saw that my life was so much bigger and richer and rewarding when I took these challenges as opposed to the trajectory I would have been on where I had to show I was smart 60,000 times and then looking back and thinking “What did that add up to?”