As a parent, it’s completely natural to want to give your children the best of everything. Coming up with ways to set them up for success isn’t always easy. There are so many decisions and it seems that everyone has advice to dole out. Starting from when they are babies it seems everyone wants to give advice. Things like, are they hitting important milestones like walking or talking when they should? Or when they start talking, do they know the recommended number of words? Then comes pre-school and helping them to learn their letters, numbers, shapes and colors. It can be overwhelming and exhausting to think about.
The thinking goes that knowing their letters and numbers at an early age will correlate to their success several years down the road, and if not, they will somehow be doomed. We all know that somehow that’s not true but yet we spend millions of dollars each year on the latest gadget, program or tutor to make sure our kids will be successful. However, countless studies show that it’s not academics, or how many letters or numbers kids know at an early age that sets them up for success, it’s how likely they are to keep going when they are struggling with something. Will they give up right away, or keep trying? Turns out that persistence for long term goals (or in a young child, continuing to try again and again) has been proven to predict success for both children and adults.
Is there a way to teach kids to have this long-term persistence, also known as grit? Turns out there are ways to teach kids how to set goals, come up with a plan to reach them, measure their progress and overcome obstacles. So the next time your child is struggling to tie their shoes, or gets upset because their block tower fell down, praise them for their effort, instead of the final outcome. You could say something like, “Wow, you’re really working hard at tying your shoes. I know you will eventually be successful”, or “Oh no- your block tower fell down. Do you think you could build an even better (higher or stronger) tower the next time?” No one likes to keep going when it’s hard or continue to work at something without a reward of some sort. Making the reward your approval (via praise) primes them to want to repeat the behavior (hard work) in the future. Eventually, there will be a real correlation between their behavior and a successful outcome (that new tower they built with their blocks will be better).