My daughter brings a book home from school every day, and hearing her read it to me is one of my favourite things.
The health blog explores how praising effort and challenge can encourage a growth mindset. After a father begins celebrating the difficult words his daughter tackles rather than simply saying “good reading”, she actively seeks harder books. The same principle applies throughout life: progress requires action, mistakes and persistence.
I didn’t particularly enjoy the learning part of school, and I don’t want that to be her experience. Whenever she struggled or became frustrated, I would reassure her that it was part of the learning process and that the struggle was the whole point.
Unfortunately, once she was already frustrated, this became little more than white noise.
After she reads each night, it is my job to write a short note to her teacher explaining how she did. A few weeks ago, I asked whether her teacher read the notes to her. Annabelle said she did. I think the goal is to provide positive reinforcement.
Anyway, I decided to try a little experiment. If children aren’t for experimenting on, what are they for?
Instead of writing “good reading” when she managed to read without struggling, I started writing things such as:
“This book was too easy. She didn’t struggle at all.”
Or:
“She is ready for something more advanced. She only got stuck on one word.”
Something amazing happened.
She began asking for more books and more challenging books. When a book was easy, she started saying, “That was too easy, wasn’t it, Dad?”
After just one week of these comments, she switched from measuring her talent to measuring her improvement.
This state of mind needs to be nurtured and protected through every interaction and every piece of praise.
But aside from my daughter, it is also a state of mind that we need to create within ourselves, nurture, and protect.
In the absence of struggle, there is no growth.
The media encourages us to judge and measure everyone as fixed entities rather than works in progress. As society seeks to benchmark and rank each of us, we must remain alert to our tendency to do the same.
Each effort we make represents our best today, but without the courage to produce it, we cannot become better tomorrow.
Growth is impossible without action.
The only way to learn how to cook, write, run a business, diet, run, read or do anything of substance is to do it badly at first and keep doing it until it is no longer bad.
Simple ideas. Outstanding results.
Read More
- Education Endowment Foundation: Changing Mindsets
- UCL: Growth Mindset, Learning, Effort and Teacher Feedback
- Education Endowment Foundation: Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning
- NHS: Healthy Weight Loss and Lifestyle Changes
- East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust: Behaviour Modification for Weight Management