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