Praising the effort and attitude: A Growth Mindset Approach

Like many parents, we are in the sweet spot of exams. Our son has just finished GCSEs and has started Sixth Form. Our eldest daughter is taking her GCSEs this year. We have A levels next year and more GSCEs and A levels the following year and so on! We have been thinking in our house about what success means. How can we instill in our children a positive approach to learning that sets them up to be happy and fulfilled rather than stressed and overwhelmed with the pressure of school and all these exams.

It is certainly a hope that each child will achieve to the very best of their abilities but not at the expense of confidence, happiness and overall mental health. With so much pressure on our children we need to be very honest about whether our own expectations are realistic or whether we are adding to the stress they may be feeling.

We can support our children by parenting positively using the core skills we teach at the Parenting Partnership: Descriptive Praise to boost self-esteem and gain cooperation, Emotion Coaching to connect, build trust and teach emotional literacy and Setting up for Success which helps us parent proactively.

Here are just a few ideas on Descriptive Praise and creating a buzz about learning:

Praise effort, strategies and attitude not aptitude and outcome :

In our classes we refer to the work of Carol Dwek, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and the author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success . Her studies reveal that praising a child’s attitude, effort and the strategies that they employ rather than their inherent abilities instills in them a belief that their brain, or intelligence, is malleable and that success is derived from hard work, practice and effort. With an understanding that learning and improvement comes from effort and even failure, they will not be afraid to seek out challenges and ways to improve. This is a Growth Mindset. Conversely if children are praised for inherent abilities (being called 'clever' or 'intelligent') they develop a fixed mind-set. Studies show that these children believe that their qualities are cast in stone as the name implies. They are less motivated to seek out challenges and push themselves for fear they will fail and they see failure as a direct measure of their competence and worth. Descriptive praise and acknowledgment focused on effort, attitude and the idea that the child has not mastered it "yet", helps children develop a growth mindset. 'You looked for extra sources of material for this history essay. That showed great initiative and hard work' 'You must be delighted with that mark. You worked really hard with your revision'. 'I can see by that look on your face that you are concentrating really hard on those difficult spellings'.

“What did you learn from that experience?”:

Further new research from Carol Dwek has shown that how parents view failure may be more visible to children than their intelligence mindsets and therefore more prominent in shaping their beliefs. Whether parents view failure as debilitating or enhancing can impact how they parent and whether the child develops a growth or fixed mindset. Parents who view failure as debilitating focus on their children’s performance and ability rather than their learning and in turn tend to view intelligence as fixed rather than malleable. This means that our children need to see us focusing on what they learn rather than on an outcome. An example is my daughter’s end of year history exam where she did not do as well as she (or I!) hoped. When asked “what did you learn from that?” she replied: “I did not revise enough. I need to do more next time. I think I will try those mindmaps.” This is a growth mindset response. A fixed mindset answer could have been: “I am never going to be good at history” or “Mr Smith did not cover all the stuff that was on the test.” Keep the focus on the learning, the strategies they employ and the effort.

All of the ideas and skills that we have highlighted are covered in further depth in our Core Positive Parenting Course.