Helping kids try new things

Carol Dweck, PhD Psychologist and Author, shares advice for parents on ways they can help encourage their children to try new things
Parenting Tips | How To Encourage Your Kids To Try New Things
KidsInTheHouse the Ultimate Parenting Resource
Kids in the House Tour

Helping kids try new things

Comment
58
Like
58
Transcription: 
A lot of parents say, “My kids don’t like to try anything new.” Ask yourself, “Where does that come from?” It comes from a fixed mindset where kids are thinking, “Gee, if I try something new, I could make a mistake. I could look foolish. I could mess up. I could fail.” What should you do? You should make new things fun. Everyone in the family should talk about what new, hard things they’re trying. Where they fell down and made mistakes. How they learned from this. This should be the value that you’re conveying to your child all the time, “New is fun. Old, well, been there, done that. New is what you’re going to learn from.”

Carol Dweck, PhD Psychologist and Author, shares advice for parents on ways they can help encourage their children to try new things

Transcript

Expert Bio

More from Expert

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.

More Parenting Videos from Carol Dweck, PhD >
Enter your email to
download & subscribe
to our newsletter