Tips for challenging your kids

Psychologist & Author Carol Dweck, PhD, shares advice for parents on the best way to help your children challenge themselves and push their boundaries
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Tips for challenging your kids

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There are a lot of things that parents can do to encourage their children to challenge themselves further. First of all, they can model it. They can say, "Wow, this is hard. This is fun." Or they can say, "I don't know how to do this. Let's see if we can figure this out." "This is challenging. The neurons are making connections in my brain." You can say that to a child, too. The whole idea is that challenges are fun and exciting, the easy challenges are boring. If you give your child an easy task and they do well, you can say, "Oh, I'm sorry I wasted your time. Let's do something harder. Let's do something fun that you can learn from." The whole idea is that challenges are fun and can help you learn. Easy stuff is a waste of time.

Psychologist & Author Carol Dweck, PhD, shares advice for parents on the best way to help your children challenge themselves and push their boundaries

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Carol Dweck, PhD

Psychologist & Author

Carol S. Dweck, PhD, is a leading researcher in the field of motivation and is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford. Her research focuses on why students succeed and how to foster their success. More specifically, her work has demonstrated the role of mindsets in success and has shown how praise for intelligence can undermine students’ motivation and learning.

She has also held professorships at and Columbia and Harvard Universities, has lectured to education, business, and sports groups all over the world, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the National Academy of Sciences. She recently won the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, the highest award in Psychology. 

Her work has been prominently featured in such publications as The New Yorker, Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, and The London Times, with recent feature stories on her work in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post, and she has appeared on such shows as Today, Good Morning America, NPR’s Morning Edition, and 20/20. Her bestselling book Mindset (published by Random House) has been widely acclaimed and has been translated into 20 languages.

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Transcription: 
There are a lot of things that parents can do to encourage their children to challenge themselves further. First of all, they can model it. They can say, "Wow, this is hard. This is fun." Or they can say, "I don't know how to do this. Let's see if we can figure this out." "This is challenging. The neurons are making connections in my brain." You can say that to a child, too. The whole idea is that challenges are fun and exciting, the easy challenges are boring. If you give your child an easy task and they do well, you can say, "Oh, I'm sorry I wasted your time. Let's do something harder. Let's do something fun that you can learn from." The whole idea is that challenges are fun and can help you learn. Easy stuff is a waste of time.