When something doesn’t work on the first try, what does your child do? Does she stop and figure out what might work better? Or does she give up or ask for help?

And what do you do, when your child attempts challenging tasks but then struggles? Are you quick to step in to complete the task for him? Do you even avoid letting your child try tasks that might be difficult, because you want to avoid the frustration?

Here’s the thing: everything we know how to do we learned the hard way, through trying and failing and then trying again. That’s really the definition of learning, to figure out something we didn’t know before we started. So when we only let children do things we know they’ll be successful at or when we step in to do things for them once they encounter a setback, we derail the very thing we’re supposed to be all about. We derail learning.

Carol Dweck, the noted expert on children’s motivation and learning, studied fifth grade children’s reactions to tricky math problems. She found that some children acted helplessly and quickly quit trying but that other children seemed to relish the challenge and enjoyed applying their thinking to working out a solution. The two different approaches to hard tasks didn’t seem to depend on what we might call “intelligence.” Kids in both groups were equally smart.

What seemed to matter was children’s expectations for their own learning. Kids who think things should be easy for them and who are praised for getting the right answer to easy questions balk at even trying to work out answers to hard questions. This makes sense: if your belief in your ability depends on always getting the right answer, even trying to answer a hard question has the potential to reveal you’re not so smart as you thought you were. But if your belief in your ability depends on your resourcefulness and persistence and dogged determination to solve problems, then the harder the problem, the smarter you feel.

The question for us, then, is how do fifth graders get this way? What went wrong in their past experience to convince them that trying is dangerous? I may not be able to tell you what happened, precisely, but I can tell you when: in their preschool and early elementary school years. Children form their ideas about themselves and their abilities long before we think they do. And we’re the ones who influence those ideas, for good and for bad.

So take a look at the tasks you let your kids take on. Look at their reaction – and your reaction – to struggle and frustration and failure. Make certain you support effort and persistence. Try not to be too quick to step in to help.

At the same time, avoid praising right answers and easy successes. When children think our opinions of them depend on their always being right, they’ll be less daring in tackling challenging problems. Congratulate your child on a good try. Help him to try again.

Do your children love a challenge? I hope they do.

© 2014, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Look for free downloads on Dr. Anderson’s website at www.patricianananderson.com.

Most of us like Right Answers. Knowing the right answers got us where we are today – pretty successful grownups who feel competent most of the time. We are good at knowing things and we feel in some ways it’s our mission to make sure our children know things too. We like it when our kids give us the right answers. We don’t like it so much when our kids are wrong.

Is that a problem? If we correct children, and make them repeat the Right Answer, even tell them they’ve given us a Wrong Answer, is that itself the wrong thing to do?

Yes. The answer is yes. It’s wrong to say, “That’s wrong.” Here’s why.

Children have an awful lot to learn before they leave our care and go out into the big wide world, even if we’re only talking about heading off to kindergarten. Learning all that stuff takes quite a bit of effort and a large amount of courage. A person has to be persistent. A person has to feel she’s making progress. All of this is undermined if a grownup is hanging around criticizing.

When an adult tells a child, “That’s wrong,” the message received is, “You’re incompetent. You’re incapable. You’re dumb.” Certainly the grownup doesn’t mean all this. The grownup only means to point out that an answer or a thought was wrong. But the vulnerable child hears an indictment. She hears a message that tells her she’s not good enough.

The child also hears that it’s safer to not think. It’s safer to wait for someone to tell him the Right Answer so he can just memorize it. It’s safer to be passive, to be dumb about learning. This is the child who is always asking if the teacher likes his paper. This is the child who watches others to see what they’re doing before he dares to try something himself. This is the child who doesn’t bother to think but waits until the Right Answer is spoken by someone else.

When we tell children their ideas are wrong, we make learning a guessing game, not an exercise in thinking. Guess what the right answer is, we’re saying. If you’re lucky or if you’re smart, you’ll guess right. If you’re unlucky or if you’re stupid, you’ll guess wrong. It should be obvious that this isn’t fair. This doesn’t contribute to a love of learning. Telling children they’re wrong when they venture an idea stops their brains.

The problem, of course, is that we adults love the Right Answer. Wrong answers give us the willies. We hate how a wrong answer lingers in the air, infecting everyone. What if the child continues to think a wrong thought? What if his brother or sister agrees with a wrong idea?

We could calm down. Our anxiety is all about us and our feelings, not about the children and theirs. Eventually, the truth will become apparent and children will come round to what we think is “right.” Or, maybe, they will stumble on a new truth and we’ll be forced to agree with them. Either way is okay. The big issue isn’t landing on a question’s one right answer.

The big issue is thinking about questions at all.

© 2014, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Look for free downloads on Dr. Anderson’s website at www.patricianananderson.com.

If you’ve been counting on your child being accepted into your district’s gifted program… or if your child is already proudly a designated member… or if your child was passed over or not even in the running to be called “gifted” … here’s a news flash: being labelled gifted or even smart isn’t the best thing that can happen to your child. It might even be the worst.

Labels like “gifted” and “smart” are just as limiting as any other labels people hang on children. They imply that a person IS something, all the time and forever. Labels like these indicate that a person is special without ever having to do anything to become special. And that’s where the trouble starts.

As noted scholar Eleanor Duckworth has pointed out, a trait mindset is less useful to a person than a growth mindset. In a trait mindset, a person is just born that way. They are naturally smart or athletic or artistic. They don’t have to work at it; things just come easy for them. Or not. One either Is or Is Not a particular labeled person, now and forever.

This means, of course, that if school comes hard for a child, under a trait mindset he expects it will always be hard. So there is no point in trying and he gives up. And – this is the kicker for gifted students – if school comes easy, there is the fear that someday it will be hard. There’s the fear that someday the child will be exposed as not-gifted and thrown out of the program or denied a prize. The gifted child, too, just like the struggling child, finds it safer to not try very hard. Labels and a trait mindset mean that all students work at less than their full capacity. For some children, labels make them give up. For other children, labels make them play it safe.

In a growth mindset, a person is working towards becoming smart or athletic or artistic. This takes effort and it’s expected that there will be triumphs and setbacks in just about equal measure.  A growth mindset is better for struggling children, who are supported in believing that practice will eventually pay off. But it’s also better for “gifted” and “smart” children, who are supported in taking chances and stretching their learning into difficult subjects.

If your child has avoided being labeled by the school or her teacher, good for her! If your child has acquired a label, either a conventionally positive one or a conventionally negative one, it’s time to take action.

1. Avoid playing into the label game yourself. If you still have time to make a choice, think long and hard about nominating your child for your district’s gifted program, just as you would think long and hard about a move to any special needs category. In any event, avoid calling your child “smart” or “gifted” in exactly the way you’d avoid calling your child “dumb” or “slow.” All labels are limiting, even ones that appear positive.
2. Encourage your child to take chances.  Let your child take on tasks that seem difficult. Obviously, you’ll advise against challenges that are out-and-out dangerous for someone of your child’s skill level, but don’t warn your child away from trying the things that might just be challenging. Avoid being overprotective.
3. Let your child struggle. A growth mindset starts from the idea that a person doesn’t know everything and has things to learn. Learning is sometimes difficult. The road to knowledge is often bumpy. Don’t be too quick to lift your child over the bumpy parts. Let him find his own path.
4. Reward grit and effort. Some parents want straight-As and blue ribbons, thinking that A students and first-place finishers are the most successful. But the child who must earn top marks to please her parents won’t take on the tough challenges. She will limit herself to tasks that aren’t difficult. This means the straight-A student is often less skilled and less capable than the student who knows how to work hard and relishes stretching her abilities.
5. Notice when things are in a rut. When your child – or even when you – become complacent, not interested in doing more than the minimum, pay attention. Do what you can to shake things up a bit, especially setting a good example yourself. Remember that your results are not preset, based on a trait that simply Is who you are. Results are achieved through effort and growth.

We all want the best for our children and it’s tempting to believe that what’s best is what’s easy. In fact, the best things in life are never free, but are earned through dedicated effort. Even the smartest child should have to work hard.

© 2014, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Parenting: A Field Guide, at your favorite bookstore.