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Early in their lives, children attempt more than their bodies and minds can perform— to walk, to draw realistically, to read and to talk. Unfazed by difficulty or failure, they attempt much, and achieve much. What seems hard at first— to walk, to read and to draw —soon becomes easier through effort, instruction and the development of mind and body. These early difficulties are met with efforts that seem to echoe that 'growth will come', and it does, growth comes, quietly but visibly. Walking, drawing, and reading become easier! Children seem to display a growth mindset naturally, yet not all retain this mindset in life and in education.
At some point in time some children begin to develop a fixed mindset, where they believe their abilities, mental or physical, are fixed, and that no further development can occur. Had they had this mindset earlier in life, they would have been discouraged by their first attempts to walk, to read, to draw, and to talk; they would have avoided all these “hard” things where ‘failure’ was possible. This is how the fixed mindset finds expression; its victims believe that their intellectual and physical abilities are fixed. Held by this belief, they avoid ‘hard’ things and are happy in doing things that come easy to them. This mindset makes children lose interest in learning, and limits what they can achieve.
We would be sad to hear that a developing child has chosen to crawl for life, never to try to walk; that a developing child has chosen to remain a child in speech, never to learn about language; that a developing child has become content to scribble, never to try to refine his writing or drawing skills. We should be sad to hear that children who are past crawling and scribbling, who can still develop further, are developing fixed mindsets today. And more than our sadness this truth should be met with plans to help them overcome the fixed mindset. There are ways dear parent to help children retain or rebuild a growth mindset; this will be the subject of part 2.
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