The Parent Compass

Marco skipped kindergarten. I knew this fact because his mother made sure to tell me at our first meeting as soon as she settled into the tan leather couch directly opposite me. My knowledge was reinforced just minutes later when she proudly handed me his résumé; right there at the top, under “Education,” it was hard to miss the special note indicating that Marco had indeed jumped from Pre-K straight into first grade. Marco’s mother beamed with pride. I gulped.

Yet Marco and his mother sat in my office because Marco was, according to his mother, unmotivated. During our meeting, Marco’s mother pointed out over and over again how smart her son was, but Marco was an average student and, per his mother’s complaints, refused to explore his interests in a meaningful way outside of the classroom. Instead, much to his mother’s dismay, he was exploring the world of video games far too often. During the course of our conversation, it became clear to me that Marco knew he was smart—his mother had been telling him so his whole life. But in doing so, Marco’s mother was in fact influencing his motivation (or demotivation, as it were). You see, being smart had become Marco’s identity. This young man avoided challenging himself inside and outside of class and never developed a zest for exploration (and instead adopted an arrogant attitude to boot), largely due to this “smart” label.

I’ve seen this phenomenon time and time again—kids who have been told they’re smart for as long as they can remember, and as a result, they don’t exhibit grit or effort either because they don’t want to ruin their “smart” reputation or because they figure they are already smart and therefore don’t need to improve. This observation is backed up by research. In her work, researcher and psychologist Carol Dweck has spent decades examining the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset and how they impact student motivation. A growth mindset is one wherein a student believes that intelligence can be built upon— improved over time—and that hard work, coupled with taking away lessons for improvement and utilizing self-advocacy skills, can result in greater knowledge. A fixed mindset, on the other hand, is when a student approaches the world from the standpoint that his intelligence is a fixed concept—he is either smart or he is not; intelligence doesn’t change and therefore extra effort cannot affect it. Dweck found that students who have adopted a growth mindset are better adjusted and more resilient and, in turn, accomplish more academically. Those who have a fixed mindset, afraid to undermine their label as “smart,” tend to shy away from embracing challenge and taking risks that stretch themselves.¹

The Making Caring Common Project, an initiative out of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, conducted a study looking at the messages that parents are sending to their children. The researchers surveyed more than 10,000 middle and high school students. They found that those students were, not surprisingly, three times more likely to agree than disagree with the following: “My parents are prouder if I get good grades in my classes than if I am a caring community member in class and school.” (What was just as disheartening to learn was that 80 percent of respondents believed that their parents valued personal happiness and achievement over caring for others.)²

Indeed, many of the kids we’ve seen in our offices place a premium on maintaining a certain grade point average (GPA). Parents frantically call or email when they think their child’s GPA might be ever-so-mildly affected by the smallest of infractions. As a result, we routinely see students who take less challenging classes than they are capable of taking because they wish to perpetuate an image of “the straight-A student.” They mistakenly think that taking less challenging classes will result in a high GPA and that they will be at an advantage over their peers (even those who choose harder classes) with lower GPAs. Parents, let us assure you: admission officers look at the classes chosen within the context of each individual applicant’s school and the trends and patterns in grades through the years—not a straight GPA in a vacuum. And if that means taking the more challenging class and earning less than an “A,” so be it. In the process, your child will learn what it is to work hard, make mistakes and get off track, and fine-tune adjustments accordingly.

Carol Dweck epitomizes the point we are trying to make in the following observation: “If parents want to give their children a gift, the best they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning . . . We can ask them about their work in a way that appreciates and admires their effort and choices.”³

A couple of months ago, I came across the casual Instagram post of an acquaintance. This mom proudly posted a photo of her beaming daughter, who was equally as proudly displaying her brand-new kitten. Sure, it was cute, but that’s not what grabbed my attention. The unsuspecting daughter was still in her swimsuit, having finished a swim meet earlier in the day. In her caption, the mom offered a rundown of how the day had unfolded. She had bribed her daughter with this reward if the child (who was a mere eight years old!) won her heat at her swim meet. Well, guess what? The child won her race, so mom did what all noble parents do and kept her promise. I remember feeling a little queasy as I read through the post—like I wanted to shake the mom and divulge all things parenting compass. Parents, a reward for a job well done is fine and can most definitely be part of your parenting repertoire. But a bribe to produce a goal or a medal only perpetuates the “outcome over effort” mentality. Please, parents, we implore you— check yourselves.

One of the best ways that we can help our kids learn resilience is to watch them do hard things, even if we know they are going to fail or falter, and then support them if they don’t succeed. I don’t know about you, but even from the time my kids were little, it was excruciating to watch them struggle as they learned a new task or concept: tying their shoes, making their bed. Sometimes, it felt easier (and quicker!) to simply do it for them. Of course, the types of tasks become more complicated and have more consequences over time. But the bottom line remains the same: the trouble inherent in the message that we send to our children by swooping in to save the day, no matter the task, is that they can’t do it themselves. We set the bar too low. So, guess what our rescuing behavior is inadvertently telling them to do? (Answer: likewise to set the bar too low.)

The reality is that encouraging and watching our kids do hard things (our own fingernail biting and wincing aside) is exactly what propels them forward, teaches them grit and discipline, and—in the future—will help them to see the positive side of a setback. I remember once, years ago, asking one of my especially high-achieving and well-adjusted students what she felt her parents did that supported her in getting to where she was. Without hesitation, she remarked (verbatim), “They made me do hard things.” That exchange has always stuck with me. Indeed, during our interview with Dr. Michael Dennin, Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning at the University of California—Irvine, we asked him about the single most important thing that parents of high schoolers should know. Resolutely, he advised: “It is important to understand how to develop a true growth mindset in students. They need to see problems as opportunities for growth and creative solutions. They need to understand that some things are worth the hard work to get better at it and that even doing poorly on assignments and school work at times is a necessary step to learning and getting better.”⁴

What does doing hard things look like? It looks different for every kid, but universally it involves the tasks that don’t come easily to them.

It looks like struggle, frustration, and often an urge to give up. And fundamentally, your role as a parent in facilitating your child’s ability to “do hard things” is to encourage her to push through despite the pain and tediousness of mastery, signaling that you support her but are not going to do it for her.

Let’s examine a student who has been honing his ability to make mistakes—and to learn from them—for nearly his whole life. Sam’s drive was notably exceptional. Sam’s parents understood that the best way to parent him was to recognize his effort, discuss improvement strategy when a mistake was made, and allow him to explore his curiosities. Sam and I were chatting one day about his academic journey, and I noticed that many of his stories were in fact failures or mistakes that he had made. But what was the most intriguing thing to me was that Sam described those mistakes with appreciation for where they led him. First there was the time when his self-built remote-controlled airplane crashed when he was a young kid. Disappointed initially that its inaugural flight was unsuccessful (and seeing his hard-earned chore money literally come crashing down), he quickly found instead that he relished in rebuilding it, focusing in particular on identifying and then rectifying the deficiencies of the previous model. (I should say models, because he did it again and again until he got it right.) Then there was the time that he was not satisfied with his progress in his English class, having earned a couple of poor grades on his papers. He committed to visiting his teacher’s tutorial after every exam or paper, focusing on what he did not do correctly. He worked out a deal with her to write extra essays in addition to those assigned to the class to practice his skills and to get her feedback on his style. Low and behold, the effort paid off; his writing vastly improved, and he earned an A in the class. Next there was the time in violin that he simply could not master the level of improvisation expected of him, try as he might. His frustration was significant. But instead of throwing in the towel (which he did consider), he chose to devise a step-by-step plan that, over time, would allow him to perfect the complicated note sequences he sought to master.

And then he recalled his journey with computer science. Thrilled by the power of coding but nervous to undertake the challenge and tedium, Sam dipped his toes into it, but beyond “hello world,” when his computer screen was rife with error messages, he became discouraged. He recruited a close friend to help him over the hurdle, and together, with tunnel vision, they created. Before the end of his senior year, he had gained two internships at tech startups, had created not one but two of his own startups, and in college is diligently working toward his goal to create a large-scale startup utilizing artificial intelligence. Sam had not taken a direct road to get where he was. Instead, he had experienced some setbacks and made some mistakes, which refined his path and enabled him to explore, then used the knowledge to propel his next steps. But ultimately, the journey led him to some incredible places.

The most striking thing about Aryan was where he resolutely chose to place his daily focus. Aryan was a student who, I couldn’t help but notice, had mastered the art of fixating not on his areas of strength, but on his areas of growth—and with an uncanny, laser-sharp focus. Aryan naturally saw his intelligence as something that could grow with him. There were many things that Aryan could do quite well: painting, writing, music. But that’s not where he spent most of his time. Aryan knew that in order to achieve the lofty goals he had set for himself, he needed to instead vastly improve upon what he called his “deficiencies.” He did this as a practice. One of his “deficiencies” was computer science, which did not come naturally to him. But in order to get closer to his goal of developing and marketing unique, life-changing devices, he needed to master computer science—so that’s what he did. Sometimes his grades in his computer science classes weren’t what he wanted them to be, but those lower marks taught him valuable lessons. He spent countless, painstaking hours researching on his own time to learn how to code and to master more and more programming languages, and he even chose to major in computer science for the purpose of becoming better at something that did not come naturally to him. Aryan had cultivated a growth mindset; to him, his intelligence was not a fixed concept but rather grew as he fed it.

Both Sam and Aryan, with the help of supportive parents, worked toward their goals with grit and resilience in the face of challenge, because they saw their “smartness” as something that could improve: what they put in, they got out tenfold. Neither of these young men was overly concerned with how it looked to others if a remote-controlled plane crashed over and over again or if a difficult subject resulted in obvious struggle until he got it right; instead, they were more concerned with the process of learning and, in turn, were able to work diligently toward their goals. And perhaps most importantly, when they faltered, they analyzed their mistakes. They thought through what they saw as areas of growth and came up with ways to improve in those areas. They added the word “yet” to their acknowledgment of deficiencies rather than made excuses. That is, they said to themselves, “I’m not good at that . . . yet.”⁵

If you find yourself able to watch your kid do hard things, chances are, he is going to fail from time to time. So how do you support him when the inevitable happens?

• Analyze the mistake or failure and help your teen develop an action plan for moving forward. Simply praising the effort isn’t enough. While it’s a start, figuring out why it happened and how to move forward to improve is a critical, and often overlooked, next step.⁶

• Ask your child to identify two positive outcomes of the failure. If she has difficulty, offer a suggestion.

• Pull out an example of a massive failure of your own. Talk about what you learned and where it led you.

• Help him identify someone or something that can help him learn more about this task or subject.

• Remind your teen that how she recovers from the failure is even more important than the setback itself. What she chooses to do with the hard lesson learned (i.e., get up and dust herself off, win the ball the next time she is knocked down, or try again and again) is in and of itself evidence of growth and persistence in the journey.

• Realize that some teen stress and anxiety (in moderation) is not all bad. Experiencing some heightened feelings when preparing for or taking a test, or before giving a public presentation or performance, for example, actually helps students do better! Natural surges of adrenaline can make us perform at a higher level and even fuel us to conquer our own fears and anxiety, too, often resulting in increased resilience. So parents, don’t try to minimize or, worse, eliminate stress for your teen altogether. Allow them to sit in it, knowing that moderate stress and anxiety is not always a bad thing.⁷

• Find some humor (if it is not too painful). Failure can sometimes (but not always) be something you can laugh about later.

• Reiterate these adages, “When one door closes a window opens,” “view the cup half full instead of empty,” and “make lemons out of lemonade.” The more you model positivity, the more likely your teen will be to embrace a similar mindset. (As an added bonus, when your teen starts to practice this type of positivity on his own, his attitude could very well impact those around him, inspiring friends and peers to approach challenges in a similar fashion.)

We’re often asked by parents, “What can I do? How can I be helpful and not a hindrance?” The best you can do for your children during the process is to normalize struggle and imperfection and to remind them, in various ways, you love them unconditionally. In the face of disappointing news, remember the wise words of Brené Brown: “Together we will cry and face fear and grief. I will want to take away your pain. But instead I will sit with you and teach you how to feel it.” Remind your children they are not defined by outcomes, and that you will love them the exact same way no matter what. That’s the best care they could receive.⁸

Part of learning to make mistakes is developing the ability to learn from them. But what happens when we aren’t sure how to proceed from the point of the mistake? This is where self-advocacy comes in. Part of your job should be to encourage your child to seek help and advice when she needs it. Bad grade on a test? Meet with the teacher to fully understand the mistakes made and to learn what could have been done better. Robot failed to complete a challenge in competition? Seek out a mentor or coach to help understand where the code failed. Want to see a change on campus? Ask for it or lead it. Self-advocacy is a critical piece to the growth mindset puzzle.

But the problem is that many young people have not had enough opportunities to practice self-advocacy. Snowplow parents have groomed the path straight down to the tundra, and the affected kids haven’t been forced to identify a need or, much less, ask for it themselves. As a result of overbearing, non-compass following parents, for many teens, approaching others for help is too intimidating, and constructive feedback is too scary. But the reality is that this type of feedback is both common and indeed necessary to our growth as human beings; allow your child to sit in the discomfort and disappointment of hard-to-hear constructive criticism before you dive in to eliminate his pain for him. Fellow parents, you can encourage your teen over time to discuss his mistakes and to learn from them. You can walk alongside him as he identifies his problems and develops appropriate action plans. You can help him, even from a very early age, learn that he has a voice and that it is valued.

From the time my kids could talk, I encouraged them to speak up for themselves. If we were out at a restaurant and they wanted a coloring sheet and crayons to pass the time, they knew that they needed to ask the host for them. (I sure didn’t want to color a picture of a giraffe, so I wasn’t going to ask for it.) When it came time to order food, they practiced using their voice, telling the server what they wanted to eat. When they were thirsty, they had to ask the server for a refill of water. As time went on, they learned to tell the doctor what hurt. Eventually, each time they “tried on” self-advocacy skills, the fact that they had a voice was reinforced—they had practiced it day in and day out. Even teens sometimes don’t place their own orders at a restaurant or ask for a drink refill because their hovering, enabling parents jump in to do it for them. Please don’t. No matter how old your kids are, you can instill in them self-advocacy skills. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Show personal restraint and keep your mouth shut in settings where you and your teen are with another adult or expert (e.g., teacher, doctor, manager, meal server), and gesture to your teen to do the talking.

• Practice role-playing at home with your teen if he has to go in to speak to a teacher or administrator about a concern or issue. Then circle back when he is home from school by asking how it went.

• Praise your teen’s self-advocacy efforts. When you witness her speaking up on behalf of herself, a sibling, a friend, or even you, thank her and acknowledge her assertiveness.

In a recent Grown and Flown article, a mother reflects on her experience allowing her son to self-advocate. She was used to jumping in to “fix things,” and when her son had an issue with a bully, she immediately went into “mother hen mode,” frantically brainstorming all of the ways that she could help him by intervening: email the teacher for him, set up a meeting, then move to Plan B. The son stopped her mid-brainstorm and softly said, “Mom, I’m not asking you to fix it. I just want to talk with you about it.” She stumbled for a moment as she realized that he was right—her job was to listen, not to fix. His job was to self-advocate. The next day when her son came home from school, she recalls, “He was so proud of himself . . . when he told me how he handled it. He fixed it—he did it, not me. The way it should be. What if he hadn’t spoken up? In my effort to help, I would have ruined any chance for him to take care of himself. How many times had he subtly tried to tell me this before? How many times have our children sat there while we rambled on with solutions when all they really wanted was for someone to listen? He taught me such a valuable lesson—he taught me to stop and listen. Instead of ‘I’ve got this,’ I had to learn ‘You’ve got this.’” She went on to reflect upon their ensuing journey together and ultimately the close, trusting relationship that they forged—one in which he articulated that he truly felt his opinion mattered, as a result of her practiced ability to sit back and let him solve his own problems. Fellow parents, follow a parent compass lesson from this mother-son duo.⁹

As I was writing this chapter and rereading it (and rereading it, and rereading it), I was struck with the number of times the words “pride” and “proud” appeared in the text. I later replaced some mentions of these words with synonyms, but even so, five appearances of some form of the word “proud” still made the cut. It got me thinking about what’s at the core of praising outcome over effort: trophies, public recognition, spotlights, certificates, gold stars—even kittens. Have we gotten so off track that we truly do value achievement over kindness, generosity, effort, and citizenship? If not, parents, then please check your pride and make more intentional parenting choices. Ask yourself about the message you are sending to your kids when you laud what they achieve over what it takes for them to get there.