The Secret to Raising Smart Kids by Carol S. Dweck

What Every Parent Wants for their Child To excel academically To be successful in life To be happy with their life To have a secure self-esteem To have healthy relationships with others To be the best that they can possibly be in whatever interest they should decide to pursue

How We Have Tried to Give this to our Children Giving our children praise and compliments Telling them and reassuring them that they are smart and talented Protecting them from difficult situations Trying to make things easy for them Telling them they have certain natural tendencies or abilities in certain subjects

What do we see happening to our children? Students who are ‘intelligent’ are shutting down whenever they run into difficult problems Those subjects that may have been easy in the past now require the student to work harder; they consequently think that they must be dumb Students refuse to take more challenging subjects because they may not appear as intelligent Students would rather take simpler subjects and be assured of getting A’s than possibly learning something new

Do You Recognize One of these Children? In primary school your child did very well academically, but once she entered middle school her grades and attitude about school went downhill. Your child was considered ‘gifted’ in math, it always came easy and it was his favorite subject, but now he hates it and doesn’t want to take it any more. You know that your child is intelligent and has the ability to do the work, but suddenly she has stopped doing any work at all in one or more of her classes, consequently she is failing.

Who is Carol S. Dweck? Dr. Dweck is a professor of psychology at Stanford University. She is a leader in the fields of motivation, personality, and developmental psychology. After 30 years of research she now shares her insights with educators, professional athletes, and the business world as well. She has written extensively; including most recently Self-Theories and Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

What Dr. Dweck has discovered: Her observations demonstrate that a person’s mindset can profoundly influence behavior People with fixed mindsets believe that their achievements are based on innate abilities; as a result they are reluctant to take on challenges People with growth mindsets believe that they can learn, change, and develop needed skills; they are better equipped to handle inevitable setbacks and know that hard work can help them accomplish their goals

Children with a Fixed Mindset Believe that intelligence is a fixed trait – that you only have so much When they make mistakes, their self-confidence is shaken Consequently they avoid challenges because making mistakes makes them look less smart They are more vulnerable and have an unwillingness to work on their shortcomings

Children with a Growth Mindset Are better equipped to learn, persist and pick themselves up when things don’t go their way Think that intelligence can be developed through education and hard work Challenges are invigorating rather than intimidating because they offer opportunities to learn Feel that “learning is a more important goal in school than getting good grades”

What can parents and teachers do to develop a Growth Mindset in children?

Show children that we value learning and improvement, not just quick, perfect performance Show pleasure over the child’s learning and improvement Teach them to love challenges: Say things like “This is hard. What fun!” or “This is too easy. It’s no fun.” Teach them to embrace mistakes, “Ooh, here’s an interesting mistake. What should we do next?” Teach them to love effort: “You really stuck to it and made great progress” or “This will take a lot of effort—boy, it should be fun.” DON’T praise intelligence; praise the process – strategy, perseverance, or improvement

“A lot of the stress comes from kids feeling that they are on display all the time, that they have to be smart and accomplished and successful, that they have to get into the right schools. This stress comes from a fixed mindset. A growth mindset says: Focus on the learning and the enjoyment of it.” Carol S. Dweck

For more information and further study on this, check out these sources: A short discussion between two education experts which summarizes Carol Dweck’s ideas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhLJPhxuvGM&feature= related For the complete article which appeared in ‘Scientific American’, go to www.thelinktutors.com/education.../The_Secret_to_Raising_ Smart_Kids.pdf