Each day we ask our children to grow their knowledge in many different subject areas including building social and emotional skills. Some tasks may seem easy to master while others require more practice and focus. For many giving up when learning gets tough can often become the more natural solution.

Adults can help students become resilient and develop a “can-do” attitude.  Developing a growth mindset can help students through tough times both in and out of the classroom and helps turn failure into learning opportunities.

People with growth mindset believe they can get smarter; failure is an opportunity to grow.

Adults can help by setting examples when faced with difficulties and challenges. Also, praising children of effort, ability to learn from a mistake, and persistence can help them with growth mindset. Good questions to ask your child: What did you do today that was hard? What new strategies did you try?

Being intentional with our words and actions can help children learn to never give up, try different strategies to solve a problem, and making mistakes is okay if we learn from them. (Bouta, J., 2019).