Persistence is a hot topic among education researchers these days and for good reason: It’s critical for success in school and beyond. Here are 8 tips for nurturing this quality in your child.
by: Hank Pellissier | January 25, 2017
Determined, diligent, tenacious, persistent — we use these adjectives to describe Olympians, spelling bee champions, entrepreneurs, and success stories of all kinds. Do they describe your child?
Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, brought this stick-to-it quality to the attention of educators and the public with her 2013 book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Gritty people, Duckworth’s research shows, finish what they start, overcome obstacles, and achieve their goals.
Researchers continue to examine how so-called “soft,” noncognitive skills like grit affect academic success as it becomes increasingly clear that these qualities are even more predictive of achievement than intelligence or talent. While there’s still much to learn about teaching kids to buckle down and work hard, research suggests there are lots of ways parents can support the development of this mindset. Here are eight ways to nurture grit in your child over time.
Those are some nice vague tips, but how about these more practical tips:
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1. Keep Score in sports
2. Make them get a job that makes real money (from someone other than the parents) ASAP
3. Clean up after themselves
4. Earn perks – do your chores or you don’t get TV, phone, lessons, sports, to attend that party, etc… NO or very,very rare exceptions
5. Don’t buy them everything – they’ll figure out how to get it if it is really important to them
6.They must take care of/look out for/defend/protect siblings
7. Teach them to cook – they should always be able to feed themselves
8. Don’t be their friend, be their parent