In my last post i mentioned that when I first read Faber and Mazlish’s book, “How To Talk So Kids Will Listen” I found the chapter on “Praise” to be eye opening. The authors cautioned parents to stop using evaluative praise, “Good Job!”, “You are the best!” and recommended that parents use descriptive praise instead:
“You said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to the waiter. That was polite.”
“You researched the paper, organized the information, wrote it down, asked for help when needed. A lot of effort went into your work.”
I also mentioned that I am reading Carol Dweck’s book on developing a growth mindset in our kids. Carol Dweck, explains the differences between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. In a fixed mindset, kids and even adults believe that it doesn’t matter how hard you work, how much effort you expend, intelligence and talents are static traits. You do not have control over whether or not you succeed. A growth mindset is the belief that you can effect change, you can learn almost anything with dedication, effort and persistence. A growth mindset sows the seeds for true success and a love of learning.
The book, Mindset, The New Psychology of Success offers it readers a simple test to take to help determine whether or not one has a Growth or Fixed Mindset.
Here it is:
Read each statement and decide whether you mostly agree with it or disagree with it.
1. Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.
2. You can learn new things but you can’t really change how intelligent you are.
3. No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.
4. You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.
According to Dweck, “Questions 1 and 2 are the fixed mindset questions. Questions 3 and 4 reflect the growth mindset. Which mindset did you agree with more? You can be a mixture, but most people lean toward one or the other.”
Do you have a Fixed Mindset or a Growth Mindset? If you have a fixed mindset, not to worry, you can teach yourself to have more of a growth mindset. Even Dweck herself admits that she had a fixed mindset and has spent her career changing her attitude.
Look for more articles coming soon on how to develop a growth mindset in your kids…