Starting with young children, research has examined a variety of practices by parents and others that 'shape' behavior, to recall a term from Skinner. Coaching and modeling to children, giving them tasks that they can reasonably accomplish, and rewarding and praising them are a few.
Praise is a particularly important, because children adore the adults who love them. Yet it can be a sticky tactic because parents and teachers often use it in ways not really helpful to longterm benefit. Research by Carol Dweck on praise with children is very interesting. Here's a link to an item about this from a few years back that puts in a parent's perspective.
Dweck's research, that the video below nicely captures in a few minutes, is on the power of giving children a 'growth mindset' over a 'fixed mindset.' A growth mindset comes from praise for effort towards a task that helps them believe that there is potential for improvement with additional initiative. A growth mindset encourages persistence toward a task even when it become more challenging (like life!). The fixed mindset comes when we praise children with a label, like 'intelligence' ("You are so smart!" "What a smart boy you are!") that rewards children for being something. Given challenging tasks they may opt out fearing that they won't be perceived as intelligent, or they may take on the belief that they aren't intelligent if a task is too challenging.
Consider this with young children and the kinds of tasks that we might ask them to do - like learn to brush their teeth, put their toys away, be kind to a younger brother, share a toy. (These might seem pretty simple but to a 3 year old they are physical and social problems to be solved.) Or you might think of a more tangible problem like learning to recognize letters (for early reading), understanding shape differences, or categorizing animals. What might be some great things that parents and other caregivers can say to offer children a 'growth mindset'?
AND relevant to our class - how might using this kind of praise HELP promote the parent-child relationship?
Parents and care givers can offer to a child is by saying "yet" or "not yet", because it gives a path for the future, and reflects them for greater possibilities. If a child gets frustrated at something and says "I can't do it!". The parent should respond to the child "You can't do it YET. You are still learning, keep trying!" Which the word "yet" can prevent frustration.
ReplyDeleteYou can replace "Good job" with "Good job sharing with your brother." Parents are showing their child that they are focusing on what they are noticing the child is doing.
Language helps shapes the children's understandings of themselves and their abilities. Its good to face challenges and learn from them, and not to let failure define them. It is good for the child to know that the parent has their positive, accepting attention on them. It is good to praise the child on their efforts, and it encourages the child to work harder and tackle challenges.
I really like the emphasis you put on parents using the word "yet"! I had never thought of how big of a difference that simple word can make on the child's views of facing the same task in the future.
DeleteAnother linguistic thing that parents and other caregivers can use to promote a growth mindset is supporting a child's creativity. Say a teacher gives a child a drawing task. Maybe they are given broad instructions on what to draw, and one of the students deviates from the main idea. Instead of telling them what they should have done, or how it's not quite right, they can honor the child's creativity. Within the parent-child relationship, a parent needs to offer support whenever a child tries to do something. If a parent gives a child a task, and it doesn't meet their standards, they must show the child that they still appreciate the effort. This way, the child knows that they won't be put down in the future for attempting a challenging task. The standards within that relationship should be low enough that the child is able to succeed, but is also challenged.
I like how you tied in supporting the child's creativity. Another idea is rather than saying "I like the colors you used," you could say, "why did you pick those colors?" By asking open ended questions on why they made the choices that they did, it opens up communication and encourages them talk through their decisions.
DeleteI think that clear instructions and word choice are crucial aspects for a growth mindset for children and when done correctly it can positively affect the parent child relationship. Instead of correcting the child for doing something wrong, maybe emphasize what they did was good but next time we could try it this way and give clear instructions on the correct way. I don't think you should ever correct children if they did something wrong as long as they tried, that just means the instructions weren't clear enough or they weren't listening. I think being very specific with children is key and it's what forms connections and pathways in their brains. Instead of just telling them "good job" state exactly what they did was good, "good job for picking up all your toys and putting them away in the toy box", if they forgot some toys you can say "you did such a good job putting all your toys away in the toy box, we should go make sure we didn't miss any" instead of just saying " you forgot some toys" you can walk them over and specially show them "oops we forgot these toys".
ReplyDeleteThis was a brand new concept for me that I had never really thought about when speaking to children. Obviously, you would think that complementing a child's intelligence would motivate them to do more, and it appeared to do just that but only to a certain extent. At the beginning of the video it seemed that the children being praised for the smartness had bigger smiles than those praised for their effort but as the puzzle difficulty increased, there was a complete swap. It was sad to see the child say that he wasn't getting that puzzle because he wasn't good at those types but after reading and the "Why You Shouldn't Tell Your Kids They're 'Smart'" article, it makes complete sense. By telling a child they're smart because they completed a task, you're rewarding their "natural" abilities and when they get to more challenging tasks they believe that they just aren't meant for those. In contrast, it would awesome to see that those praised for their effort wanted to tackle tasks that, in fact, required more effort. I am definitely going to hold on to these thoughts for the future!
ReplyDeleteThis topic hits seriously close to home. I am definitely a prime example of what having a fixed mindset looks like. As a child I was always praised on my intelligence rather than my effort, and now, as an adult, I find it extremely difficult to willingly challenge myself and I give up super easily. Parents should say (and my parents could have said) things like "you worked really hard to solve that problem" or "I like how you kept trying until you got it"; things that praise their child's effort and hard work rather than how smart or good at math they are. Giving the child the kind of praise that leads to a "I can do this if I just keep trying" sort of attitude helps the parent child relationship by showing that the parent has faith in the child's ability to work hard. If the child thinks he or she is only going to get praise for succeeding at something, they're only going to want to try things in which they know they will.
ReplyDeleteLike many of my classmates, I had never really thought about this topic before, but I can definitely see the importance in choosing your words wisely when trying to promote learning and a strong parent-child relationship. One idea that has not been talked about yet is telling the child how their actions affect you as a parent. In class we talked about how one of the tasks of childhood is to connect to others, and how children want to please their parents/caregivers. So by saying things like "I am so proud of you for working hard on that project" or "It makes me to happy to see you sharing nicely with your brother," children are both being praised for their efforts and having the positive bond between them and their parent reinforced. I think using by doing this, children will feel more connected to their parent and be more willing to do the good behavior in the future.
ReplyDeleteI agree with a lot of what has been said before. I haven't really thought about this topic and I think its because people in my family generally use fixed mindset words when it comes to praising a child. I think being specific and stating exactly what the child is doing well is a great way to grow growth mindset, but the parent also has to be careful not to micro manage the child by interrupting them every time they do something good and praising them. I found a nice site that has some tips when it comes to dealing with a child's mindset when they are young, but it can also be applied to when they are older too. I think it ties in directly with what were talking about and gives some other insight as well.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.centreforconfidence.co.uk/projects.php?p=cGlkPTI5NQ
This link was great Lilly, I found it interesting to think about intentionally creating times to model skills with a child and praise them for their efforts. Thinking about my childhood, I see that my parents really focused on character and effort when it came to chores and school work. Rather than telling us we were smart, they talked about perseverance and working hard.
DeleteThis was really great, but at the same time, I wish that they had also taught me more about being able to gracefully leave activities or tasks that I was not able to do well. As a teen, I think it would have been helpful to know that trying hard over and over at a job or activity that I was never going to do well was admirable, there was also a time to be able to leave a job or class that I was doing poorly in and not feel like a failure.
I know we want children to try everything and believe in themselves, but I think at some point in their journey towards adulthood we need to allow them to focus more on things that are in areas of their natural gifts and not just try hard at things they will never succeed in. This is not really a task for early childhood, but I think parents need to keep this in mind as they praise children, that they also want to encourage children as they grow older in such a way that they learn how to gracefully accept their own abilities and limitations.
With the children I work with I do my best to use words of encouragement involving the child's effort or their attitude. It is also important with the age that I work with, to remember that their is a huge difference and range of abilities. Some three year old's can't even do half of the things that the four or five year old's can and some five year old's can't do half of the things another five year old can do. That is why growth mindset is very important in my line of work. We tend to put a lot of emphasis on body work. For instance a three year old is watching a five year old on the monkey bars and wants to try to do them but they don't quite have the ability yet. We will tell that child "so and so's body is ready to do this activity and your body is still growing and when your body is ready you can do that too!"
ReplyDeleteIt is important for parent child relationships because it will help the child's self esteem as well as help the relationship itself. The child will most likely have a better outlook on life and will learn early that there is always room for improvement and we aren't always able to do things right away and they take practice.
Like Rylenn, I am also an example of someone with a fixed mindset. Growing up, my parents, my friends, and my teachers constantly praised me for being "intelligent". I was almost always labeled as the "smart" one among my friends and my parents almost always bragged about my "smartness" to their friends. However, as you get older, life gets harder and education gets more challenging. Like, most fixed mindset people, the efforts slowly start to stop or they're more likely to give up. To prevent this from happening, parents and caregivers can say some things like, "Awesome job! That answer is correct! You definitely put in effort to get it correct!" or "That's not the correct answer but I can tell you put in some effort. Try harder next time and you'll definitely get it right!"
ReplyDeleteThis kind of praise is important for parent child relationships because parents are giving positive, beneficial encouragements that promote the child to have an optimistic way of thinking. Encouraging with a fixed mindset causes children to, in a way, think in a narcissistic way.