Growth

 There's been a lot of talk in social sciences lately about the growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. The idea is that if you have a growth mindset, you feel like you are capable of changing and developing new skills. A fixed mindset suggests that you can only be what you're already good at.

The subject comes up a lot in education, and I've become particularly aware of it as I try to teach my children various skills, like math and reading. Consider the difference between saying, "You did a great job. You're so smart" and "You did a great job. You worked really hard." Smartness feels static. Either you are or you aren't. So if that's why you did a good job, then there's little point in trying and persisting even when you fail at first.

I have loved applying this perspective to teaching my children because I think it's crucial for them to realize that struggling with a concept now doesn't mean they always will. Today my child was in tears over skip counting, poor dear, so we stopped and I reminded her of how far she'd come. I turned to there beginning of her math book and talked about how she's started out just counting objects and circling the correct number. Now she does basic addition, can count and write large numbers fairly well, and has better number sense than she realizes.

When we turned back to those first pages, though, and talked about how far she'd come, I could see her visibly begin to relax. She really needed to see that she was growing and improving. Once she saw that, I think it helped click for her that she could keep going.

We talk about this perspective with teaching children, but I wonder how well we apply it to ourselves. When I look back at old writing of mine, I'm far more likely to cringe than to say, "Look how far I've come!" When we think about what we're good at now, do we think we'll never be good in any other areas? Or do we look at our weak areas and see opportunities for growth?