As you already know how important growth mindset is for children, this writing will share to you how to develop a growth mindset for your kids.
There are many qualities that connect with the development of a growth mindset that you can build up for your children. Additionally, the ways parents communicate with their children also contribute to mindset development.
By Thao Nguyen
Summary
1. Self-control development
Through the book Keep Growing: How to encourage students to persevere, overcome setbacks, and develop a growth mindset, the author emphasizes the relationship between growth mindset and self-control. Self-control can form with tools and strategies that support and enable children to go through a hard time.
One tool is to discuss with children the scale of each problem they are dealing with: is it big, medium, or small. At this point, importantly, parents need to understand that everyone rates their issues differently. That understanding helps parents to not underestimate evaluations of children. If parents minimize the degree to which children are bothered or stricken by a situation, it is hard for parents to be part of children’s journey toward self-improvement afterward. The responses such as “This is not a big deal.”, “Let it go!” or “Some children do not even get to go to school” will undermine children’s feelings and rights to their feelings unintentionally.
After scaling the size of the problem, parents can apply the If/then strategy mentioned in the following section to help children learn how to control themselves.
2. Other supportive qualities to enhance the growth mindset
Besides self-control, these qualities impact the development of the growth mindset: responsibility, independence, self-regulation, perspective, initiative, and resilience.
a. Resonsibility in growth mindset
Responsibility is children’s willingness and ability to do what they should do by following rules and schedules and taking accountability for their actions and choices. The actions manifesting this quality can be organizing their desks, changing behaviors to avoid the same mistakes, and doing assigned homework.
b. Develop independence for growth-mindset kids
As its name suggests, independence helps children start and go through their work without being told before asking for help. Independent children tend to try their best to complete their tasks, plan, schedule, and figure out what to do next by themselves.
c. How to develop self regulation for kids
This quality helps children be calm and aware of what is happening around them simultaneously. And then, those children have the mindfulness to think rationally and realistically. Finally, when facing problems, they won’t lose control of themselves but instead self-regulate.
d. Perspective
Perspective is the ability to think about and consider the thoughts and needs of others from other people’s angles. Children with perspective tend to care about people around them, understand why someone acts differently and apologize when they recognize something wrong caused by their own behaviors.
e. Resilience
Resilience helps children face failure when they realize that they can learn from mistakes and use them to improve performance the next time. Usually, children who have this quality ask teachers for extra help after getting a low score on a task, finish a race even though they are last, or self-correct after giving incorrect facts in a presentation or a conversation.
f. Initiative
The willingness to do something without being asked or being told what to do. For example, when seeing garbage on the floor, children pick it up. They arrange books on the shelves without being told.
3. If/then strategy
To grow those qualities, parents might consider practicing if/then statements for children. Those statements represent how children can deal with difficulties, instead of giving up or being overwhelmed by them. One if/then includes two clauses: if and then. The If clauses give clear actions or what children need to do. Meanwhile, the Then clauses must show children what they get for themselves when actions in the If clauses are done. The “Thens” have intrinsic value, and eventually, they lead to more self-development and support daily exposure that can change mindsets. It means that “Then” clauses should help children recognize the matter of an effort and process instead of results and awards. In practice, If/then strategy helps children learn, try harder and push themselves through all challenges. The following examples will help you clarify what was mentioned above:
4. Encouraging your children
To help your children develop their growth mindset, your verbal communications are a productive tool. Here are some ways you can talk with and encourage them.
Having a growth mindset benefits children in different aspects of their lives. And it is not impossible to develop a growth mindset for your children. However, it is a journey that requires parental persistence and patience. Without them, parents cannot accompany their children to go through the journey. Indeed, parents need to put a lot of effort into learning and seeking different ways and resources to reach the final goal, the growth mindset for their children.
References:
Dweck, C. (2015). Carol Dweck revisits the growth mindset. Education Week, 35(5), 20-24.
Emily Rhew, Jody S. Piro, Pauline Goolkasian & Patricia Cosentino | (2018)
The effects of a growth mindset on self-efficacy and motivation, Cogent Education, 5:1, 1492337,
DOI: 10.1080/2331186X.2018.1492337Mandel, Joey. Keep Growing: How to encourage students to persevere, overcome setbacks, and develop a growth mindset, Pembroke Publishers, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/tampere/detail.action?docID=4851644.
At BiziVietnam, understanding the importance of the growth mindset, our teachers focus on the ways to help children realize that learning is a process, and results are only a small part of it. The matter is how to experience new things and enjoy the learning process, rather than focusing on the results or marks.
Children learn through activities in which they are motivated and encouraged to keep growing and maintaining their mother tongue. Besides, our varied clubs are expected to provide children opportunities to explore their abilities and extend their knowledge regarding their home country.
We believe that those opportunities will support their learning process as well as the development of the growth mindset. For parents, we create an exclusive material, named Tiếng Việt Vui, to help parents approach different educational information and tools to be associating with their children through the learning development.
The learning material is sent to parents monthly with a variety of content so that parents and children will have great moments to play and learn together. Beside that, becoming a member of BiziVietnam, each family will receive different discounts from our partners. Join us to maintain language and culture for your children.
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