Bonus episode - How to build grit and resilience in children - Amazing book takeaways

So  today I am excited to talk about Angela Duckworth’s book Grit.   I recently read it and fell in love with the idea of encouraging grit in our children. As I sometimes joke, I like to introduce personal development to kids through their mothers. So moms, I’ve got some practical tools I took from the book that you might find helpful in raising gritty children.

In the book Angela Duckworth argues that grit, which is  a combination of passion and perseverance, is a more accurate predictor of success than intelligence or talent. 

And while grit is not the only factor that makes possible the accomplishment of our goals, it certainly plays a major role. I would argue that it’s worth the time to talk a bit about the ways we can teach kids to work toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.

The author defines 4 steps in  developing grit and the first is

1. To Cultivate our children’s  interests

Interests are triggered by interaction with the outside world. The process of interest discovery can be messy and inefficient. Because without experimenting you can’t predict what will capture your little one’s attention and what won’t. For example it’s better to sample a variety of different sports before committing to one. And then observe. Sometimes kids won’t even realize they are passionate about an activity. But we as bystanders will be able to notice the surge in their attention. When you’ve finally found an area of interest, support them, celebrate the small wins, give positive feedback, and be very cautious with the corrective feedback. New interests thrive when there’s plenty of encouragement. 

1. The second step is to Develop a habit of a daily challenge-exceeding-skill practice

Once your child has found a fun activity she wants to commit to, it’s time to introduce the deliberate practice. This is an effortful practice aimed to improve her skill. You deliberately set the level of challenge to exceed her level of skill.  She’s getting a lot of feedback about what she’s doing wrong and she’s using that to make adjustments and try again in an attempt to move closer to the ideal. This step is hard. And usually there are the coaches who take the leading role here. Yet knowing the process, we can better support our little ones when times are hard and they are discouraged.

Although hard, deliberate practice can be experienced as enjoyable. Encourage your children to say to themselves “That was hard! It was great!” Encourage them To be proud of themselves because they did it and to enjoy the fact they are making progress. 

1. The third part of the process of nurturing grit is to teach the kids to hope when all seems lost -  We want to cultivate their ability to get up off the floor when life has knocked them down, to keep getting up, time and again, always learning and growing.  We want them to stay optimistic even when they feel disheartened. When teaching them to remain hopeful and persevere it’s helpful to explain adversity in an optimistic way. When something doesn’t go as planned, this is how I flip it on its head. I remind myself- This is not happening to me, it’s happening for me. In every setback there’s a lesson to be learned and I  am meant to go through this and collect the wisdom. 

Hope aside, there’s another part of being resilient and sticking with things and it's actually believing you can do it. The belief comes from self-worth. And that comes from how others have made us feel in our lives. For our children to believe in themselves we have to believe in them long before that. 

1. And here’s the last step of developing grit - immerse your offspring in a culture of grit 

There’s a hard way to develop grit and there’s an easy way. The hard way is to do it by yourself. The easy way is to use conformity - the basic human drive to fit in-  because if you’re around a lot of people who are gritty, you’re going to act grittier. So parents, if you are gritty, your kids will probably emulate you. If not, bear in mind that  It’s not just mothers and fathers who lay the foundation for grit. There’s a larger ecosystem of adults that extends beyond the nuclear family. Developing your kids personal grit depends critically on other people - coaches, teachers, friends. Find a culture of grit where they can immerse themselves. 

Having all these pieces in mind, there is a practical exercise that I would like to draw your attention to. I am definitely going to implement it in our family with the girls that are old enough. By the way, always keep in mind that these lessons are not applicable for everyone right away. My four year old is not ready to engage in deliberate practice. But my 9yo is. What I can do with the 4yo is to introduce her to different sports for example or just pay attention to what she enjoys doing - singing, drawing, performing and be ready to support her later on. 

Having said that, here’s what Angela Duckworth recommends to parents who want to cultivate grit in their children: abide by the Hard Thing Rule and in addition the Fun Thing Rule. She suggests asking our kids to do something that will teach them, through experience, deliberate practice and resilience. But also making sure that they’re doing things that they find interesting and enjoyable, even if it doesn’t seem that they could ever lead to anything more serious. Why? Because the ultimate goal is to grow up to develop a calling - a fun thing that is also a hard thing.

The Hard Thing Rule has three parts.

The 1st  is that everyone - including mom and dad- has to do a hard thing. A hard thing is something that requires daily deliberate practice. It could be playing an instrument, a sports practice, or math lessons, anything that qualifies. 

The second part  of the rule is - you can quit. But You can’t quit until the season is over, the tuition payment is up, or some natural stopping point has arrived. You must, at least for the interval to which you have committed yourself, finish whatever you begin. In other words, you can’t quit on a day when your teacher yells at  you, or you lose a race, or you have to miss a sleepover because of a recital the next morning. You can not quit on a bad day.

And the third part - You get to pick your hard thing. Nobody picks it for you because it would make no sense to do a hard thing you’re not even vaguely interested in. 

The idea of implementing the Hard Thing Rule is to Learn to follow through something hard while still in school. This seems the best possible preparation for doing the same thing later in life. 

Here’s how the Hard Thing Rule looks for us:

My thing is working on this podcast. It’s new for me, I am often faced with situations outside my depth and comfort zone and I keep repeating to myself. This is hard and I am proud I’m doing it.

My oldest daughter Laura picked playing the piano as her hard thing which is also her fun thing. My 7yo - Mary- decided on swimming lessons. She often has tears in her eyes during practice when the coach gives her a new exercise and yet she’s always eager to go to the next practice. My husband chose to start a different eating regimen. 

To sum it all up, 

The idea of raising gritty children fascinates me. I haven’t been raised that way and I am growing my grit now, in my late thirties. I want to help my girls build resilience early on so they have it a bit easier than me to adapt to life’s challenges and to follow up on their goals. I hope the information I shared  was helpful and inspiring for you too.