By Dr Deborah Trengove
As another school year begins, parents around the state are thinking about how they can best support their child to thrive in 2025. Dr Deborah Trengove, our Parent Resource Coordinator at ParentZone, has put together some tips about how to help your child build a growth mindset – something that is essential for success at school and beyond.
What is a growth mindset?
Learning new things can be challenging and frustrating. Even children and teenagers who have a lot of natural ability in specific areas will reach a point when not everything comes easily. So, how can parents and carers encourage young people to persist when things are hard, and disappointments occur?
One way to build resilience is to encourage what is known as a growth mindset. This term was developed by Dr Carol Dweck, who is an expert in motivation.
Growth mindset is the opposite of what Dr Dweck called a fixed mindset. A growth mindset is based on the belief that we can grow our abilities, while a fixed mindset is based on the idea that we have a fixed amount of ability that cannot change. A growth mindset recognises and values the process of learning as much as the results, unlike a fixed mindset, which leads to comparisons and judgments based on success only.
Some of the common characteristics of a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset include:
Here are some concepts and strategies parents can use to support their children develop a growth mindset.
Feedback and praise
When you’re giving praise and encouragement to your child, make sure you’re providing clear, specific feedback about the qualities they have shown, such as effort, persistence and trying new strategies. By doing this, you’re recognising things that are under the child’s control, which is empowering. This type of feedback highlights the range of experiences that can be associated with learning, such as enjoyment, satisfaction, interest, and improvement.
Avoid using global praise such as “good boy” or “clever girl”. Phrases like this don’t give the child any real information about what they did to earn the praise. It’s also best to avoid comparing the child to others. Instead, focus on their individual effort and improvement – they are “running their own race”.
Some great phrases to use are:
- I can see you worked hard on this.
- You looked like you enjoyed learning about that.
- You should feel proud of yourself, you didn’t give up.
- Writing essays can be challenging, let’s see what new strategies you can try.
YET – the magic word
Some children feel discouraged if they are not achieving the same milestones as their peers or are not able to do something they’ve set their hearts on. This is where you can introduce the power of YET. YET gives optimism and, when coupled with a useful strategy, models problem-solving as well as reinforcing the goal of personal improvement rather than comparison to others.
The conversation below is an example of incorporating YET into encouragement for a child who is struggling:
Child: I am hopeless, I can’t throw a ball like everyone else.
Parent: I can see that you can’t throw a long way YET. Let’s practice together and I am sure your
throwing will improve.
Mistakes help us learn!
Help kids understand that mistakes are an important part of learning and do not represent failure. Explain that learning new things or practising skills is how our brains grow and develop new connections. Mistakes give us feedback and are part of the learning journey for everyone.
Practice what you preach
Model your own growth mindset by acknowledging your mistakes and allowing your child to see you tackle new or challenging activities. Let them see you seek out different strategies and persist despite frustrations. Use language which reflects the enjoyment and satisfaction you experienced achieving a goal or solving a problem.
By incorporating these strategies into everyday interactions, you can support your child to enjoy their learning and help them build a resilient approach to frustrations. This will lay the foundation for a healthy self-esteem based on personal effort and growth and set them up as learners for life.
