Praise hard work, not intelligence

I just finished listening to a lecture by Carol Dweck at IT Conversations, Dweck, a Stanford psychologist, is the author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

Dweck’s idea is straightforward, though widely applicable.  She starts with the premise that there are two kinds of people, those with “fixed mindsets” and others with “growth mindsets.”  Those with fixed mindsets see their lives as being about proving themselves and not making mistakes.  It is important to them that they look smart at all times.  Those with “growth mindsets” have deep-seated beliefs in cultivating and developing their own qualities.  Their lives are about stretching and growing, a process that is not thwarted (and is sometimes actually enhanced) by making mistakes.

How do you tell which mindset you have?  During the interview, Dweck offered this simple test: “True or false, you can’t change how smart you are.”  If you think this is true, you probably have a fixed mindset.

This distinction important because there are adverse consequences to having a fixed mindset.  If you have a fixed mindset, failures label you as a failure for the rest of your life.  People with fixed mindsets develop inaccurate views of themselves.  They block out negative information for the sake of their egos.  Compare this to growth mindsets, where failures are not self defining, but merely bumps along the way.  Failures are, indeed, opportunities for growth.   Those with growth mindsets actually crave negative information.  They stay in touch with their own liabilities in order to …

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We should raise children like we raise dogs

How should you take care of them?  According to one book I’m reading, you need to give them lots of exercise and they need to eat good food.  You need to buy a good leash and collar.  No, I’m not referring to a childcare book–I’m talking about a book on dog care: The Complete Dog Care Manual, by Bruce Fogel, president of ASPCA.

                       dog book.jpg

To use a dog book to raise a child, you’ve got to pick and choose the advice, of course.  You don’t put your children on leashes or toss them bones (except when they misbehave!).  It is interesting, though, that dog-raising books are full of good ideas that also apply to raising children.  And it’s especially interesting to compare the way we are supposed to raise dogs with the way many people actually raise children. 

My family has a dog (“Holly”) and two human children, aged 6 and 8.  I am thus an expert on this topic.

My dog-training book stresses that taking care of a dog requires a lot of work.  We need to invest a lot of time in order to have a healthy animal.  The dog book places a premium on early training?  “Your dog relies on you to train it from an early age to be trusting, even-tempered and sociable…” (page 48).  Compare this advice with the way many people actually raise children, ignoring them for long stretches and often abandoning them to the commercial wasteland of television.

Feeding is critically important, according …

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