Instilling Growth Mindset in Kids: Parenting Strategies, AI Tools and Expert Insights

welcome to the Where Parents Talk podcast.

We help grow better parents through science.

Evidence and the lived experience of other parents.

Learn how to better navigate the mental and physical health of your tween teen or young adult through proven expert advice. Here's your host, Lianne Castelino.

Welcome to Where Parents Talk. My name is Lianne Castelino. Our first guest today is an experienced designer in health tech.

Annie Brock is also an author with degrees in journalism, English, education, and instructional technology. She's also a mother of two and has long championed the growth mindset.

Our second guest today is an educator and a current school administrator with specialties in curriculum, instruction and continuous school improvement. Heather Hundley has co authored five books and she's a mother of four.

Together, Annie and Heather are the co authors of the Growth Mindset Coach second edition. They join us today from Kansas. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Hi, Leanne. Thank you for having us.

Yes, thank you.

So this new edition of your book comes out almost 10 years after the first edition, and I'm curious as to why now. What has happened in the last decade, in your mind that merits an update to this book?

Well, what hasn't happened in the last decade? I think it might be a better question. You know, I. There is so much noise right now in the world.

There's, you know, teachers are facing more and more responsibilities. There's a lot of outside parent pressure coming into the school.

There are a lot of things happening in politics, especially here in America, our department of Education, getting cut and changes in the way things are done. And it can be. So it's extremely stressful to be in education and have all these changes happening and feel all this pressure.

And for us, growth mindset is, it's actually just a really simple concept.

And at its core, you know, teaching and learning is about building relationships and helping someone grow, grow into, you know, whoever it is they're going to be. And that's such a simple idea that we wanted to pick back up the growth mindset conversation.

There's 10 years of teachers who have, have entered the profession since we, since we wrote the first edition.

And so, yeah, we wanted to remind them that it doesn't, you know, in your classroom, the four walls of your classroom and your kids, that is an environment where you can shut out the, the noise and the pressure from the outside and just focus on building relationships and helping kids grow.

When we talk about growth mindset, Carol Carol Dweck, American psychologist, was the one who came up with the concepts.

How would you Go about defining them for people who may not be familiar, hard as that might be to believe, what the growth, what growth mindset actually is and how it differ. A fixed mindset.

Yeah, so you're exactly right. Carol Dweck is the researcher that has put forth all the energy and effort in being able to come up with growth and fixed mindset.

So really growth mindset is the ability, the belief that the ability, your abilities, intelligence can be developed and grown. Fixed mindset would be the opposite of that. Just that you either have it or you don't have it. It's very static traits.

And so that's a simple definition of what growth and fixed mindset. What it is.

Yeah. And you've heard someone say, like I'm not, I'm just not a math person.

You know, that's kind of like a fixed mindset belief that you just, you know, you are either born with it or not or like I'm just not athletic. And so that's kind of like a fixed fix. A good example of a fixed mindset belief. We hear a lot.

I think it's important to note too that we are a mixture of both. It's an individual is not just fully growth mindsetted or potentially fixed mindset. That we are a mixture of both.

And there are things that we encounter in life that we may find ourselves more with.

A fixed mindset starts to edge in and then others where maybe we, we can really champion that growth mindset practice and the language that comes with that.

So your book is written primarily for teachers, but not exclusively for them. How can parents adopt some of the strategies or at least try to, you know, approach more and more with a growth mindset?

Okay, I just, I love that you asked that question because I think that the teacher parent relationship, when you know, you can use kind of the language around growth mindset both at these two really important places for kids and create a united front. That is so important. But for me and you, please chime in. Would be just want to create like school.

Create a home environment that really values curiosity and to show excitement for learning, not just grades. Praise is a big one. So when your child does something.

I read a story in the book about how I took my daughter to an art center and she was maybe two or three at the time, and she worked on this drawing and she held it up to one of the workers and the worker said, and she said, do you like my picture? And the cute, you know, the cutest way and the. And the lady who worked there to her and she goes, well, tell me what you like about your picture.

And I was like, that was so great, because I would have just said, oh, yes, it's beautiful. It's gorgeous. You know, it's your little Picasso.

And then I love that this lady instead, like, asked the question, like, you tell me what you like about it. You tell me what's great about it. But, yeah, just praising effort, strategy, persistence, not just the results, and modeling the learning process.

Just talking your way through everything that you do.

And, you know, when you're feeling frustration or when you're, you know, cooking dinner and you say, I forgot to get the, you know, onions at the store. And so now I have to figure out what to substitute with the onions. And you talk yourself through a challenge and how you overcome it.

I think that's a great way to model growth, mindset, normalizing mistakes. Mistakes are just part of learning, and they happen. And so not, you know, not.

Mistakes don't have to be the end of the world, I think, is yet another. And then encouraging what we call productive struggle in the book.

So at school, we have strategies like Ask3, then Ask Me, or things like that that we do to get kids to keep trying on their own instead of just giving them the answer.

And so if your child comes to you with a question or says, you know, I. I can't figure out how to do this thing, you might say, instead of saying, well, let me help you or let me do it for you, say something like, you know, what's another way that you could try? So that way didn't work. So what's another way you could try things like that? So just ask a lot of questions and focus on the process and over the.

Over the result, I think is my best advice.

Yeah, I would agree with that. It is. It's modeling. And we'll talk, I'm sure, later on, just about the language that.

That can be delivered around when you're parenting and you're engaging and you're recognizing where there's a good entry point for changing the conversation to be able to help, really emphasize having a growth mindset and practicing those strategies.

I think, too, we said, like, celebrate progress. Like, focus on. When it comes to, like, your, you know, your kids bring grades home from school. And tough grades aren't just tough on kids.

They're tough on parents, too, because, you know, it's. It's hard to see that they might be struggling with something and maybe you don't feel confident in the subject and that you can't help.

But I would really encourage parents to focus on. Let. I have. My son has dyslexia. So he has struggled a lot with spelling, particularly in handwriting.

Lots of, you know, reversals, especially when he was younger. And so spelling tests were usually pretty abysmal. Like we, they, they didn't go well because he kind of tends toward like phonetic spelling.

And so I remember one week he had got a 2 out of 10 on his spelling test and he was, you know, just beside himself. And then I was, you know, it's like, we got to keep at it. We're going to keep studying. The next week he got four out of 10.

And I feel like there's a world where I could have said like, oh, another 40% and F, like you're just not getting it, you know, but instead I was like, you, you doubled your score. You, you literally doubled your score. You went from two to four.

And so like focusing on that, the, the little wins, the progress, I think is really important way that parents can incorporate growth mindset at home.

And when they don't quite master it, the simplest thing is adding the word yet. So you don't have it yet.

But there are ways that we can help, you know, encourage them to keep, keep trying, keep problem solving, keep focused on what that end goal is and look for those small wins to help champion.

So what would you say then to a parent who perhaps is more of a fixed mindset individual and is trying to adapt themselves to at the same time as they're trying to encourage a growth mindset in their child? Obviously there's a disconnect there, but there's also an evolution. Any strategies that those parents could deploy?

I think just constantly being a problem solver in our household, that was one of the things that we would constantly reflect on and, you know, thinking about how can I continue to problem solve.

And so when you're at this intersection, I think just making sure that you constantly keep open, whether it's for yourself as the parent or for your child, are, you know, what's the work of problem solving and that productive struggle, you may not get it the first time. Is there another strategy you can try?

And I think having that open, transparent conversation with your, with your child, like, I'm, I'm not going to get it right all the time either. And so this is what it looks like for me to continue to grow and to practice and I'm going to get it. I'm going to do better the next day time.

And these are the things that I'm going to do to Try to make that better.

So I think for us, at least in my household, it was really a matter of when those worlds began to intersect, of maybe I was more of a fixed mindset or my husband for that. You know, in that case, how we could approach it with our children of they're also growing and so modeling that for them was really powerful.

And you know, they, they know now. Are you a problem solver? Like there's things that come up.

Yeah. Haunts. What is it? I mean growth mindset is.

So we talk, we give you lessons for teaching it to kindergartners, preschoolers in this book, like it is, it's really like your how good at something you are is directly tied to your effort. The harder you work at something, the better you become at it. And you can always be better at whatever you set your mind to and put effort in.

And fixed mindset is when you're, when you're scared that you're going to fail and so you just don't try.

You give up maybe, or you feel like a failure or you say I'm, I'm no good and the, the smallest children can understand it and then start calling each other out and then say like now that we have this language fixed in growth mindset, you can say like I'm having such a fixed mindset about this or say, you know, you're kind of having a fixed, fixed mindset about this. Like how can we switch that around or point it out?

You see it in and now like it's kind of one of those things like when, once you learn it, you see it everywhere. Like basically every Pixar movie. The, the core message is about growth mindset, right? So like use that language and call it out when you see it.

In our, you know, just in our world, we have a lot of fixed mindset messages around and just embedded in our day to day.

And so when, when you think about it in a school setting too, you know, we provide gifted, we name gifted exceptionally students and then we, you know, basically indicate that there's opportunities that others don't deserve because of the smartness. Right?

And so then when, you know, we're setting up and they're encountering all of these messages on the outside world, sometimes naming that too is helpful. Like how does that apply to your child?

And when they may or may not get to participate in those different activities and being able to name it I think is really important.

I think if you, and if you do have a gifted child, gifted children can be especially susceptible to fixed mindset. Thinking because of the sheer amount of messages that a gifted child gets about their intelligence and their smartness.

And, you know, you're so smart, maybe from the youngest age, you know, if they were really precocious or early reader, they are bombarded with messages about their intelligence from the earliest days.

And those are some of the kids that have the toughest time getting out of those fixed mindset frame, frame of mind, because they're so used to being the best in class and the smartest in class and the fastest done and done the best.

And so if you do have a gifted child, definitely make sure that they're having opportunities to encounter struggle, because that is something that they're going to need to work at, is to learn how to be faced with the challenge. And then what does it feel like to struggle with something? Because at the end of the day, that is what learning is.

It's like, I don't know something, and it's putting in the work to know it. Right? And, yeah, I think gifted kids can really fall into those fixed mindset traps. Like, well, I'm not even going to try.

In fact, I had a really good example of this. We did a. In one of my classes, we had to build.

All the kids just kind of got flat sheets of paper and then masking tape, and they had to build a bridge. I worked in the library, and so. And they had to build, like, a structure that would hold books. I had this huge set of, like, animal books.

And so, like, there were 50 books in the set, and so we'd stack, you know, count how many you could get. And there were two boys that happened to be paired together that were from the gifted program. And, you know, it was.

This was a timed challenge, and it was getting down to the end of the challenge, and they could see all around them that kids were practicing. There were some teams that were getting 20 books on their structure, and their structure wasn't working.

They weren't able to communicate effectively to get the assignment done. And so they. I watched them take the paper and just wad it up and throw it in the trash. And I was like, why did you do that?

And they're like, oh, like, it wasn't going to be good anyway. And, like, that was such a good opportunity to say, like, hey, like that.

Such a classic example of, like, I'm just gonna give up because I'm not gonna be the best at this.

And so I definitely wanted to use that as an opportunity to say, like, instead of doing that, you could have, you know, gotten Curious about how the other kids created this structure or what went wrong or started asking yourselves questions, and their choice was just to wad it up and throw it in the trash. And. Yeah, and kids will do that if you don't constantly talk about effort and how that is what leads to achievement.

Yeah, I think getting. Adding another little layer to that, too, is when we're giving students praise, being behavior specific versus thinking about the person themselves.

And so when we say things like, you're so smart, that is a fixed message that's coming to students and so. Or your children. And so thinking about what. What is the thing that they did? What effort did they put in?

What was the strategy that they tried that you can get really granular about to help prove to them that it's. It's beyond that person.

Carol Dweck says person praise versus process praise. And we said in our. Do you remember the show American Idol? We have this in the book. This is dated, a dated reference.

And I left it in the second edition because I think it's just such a good example. You can see. Still find it on YouTube. Do you remember Paula Abdul when she was one of the judges and it did not matter, And.

And Simon Cowell had these just scathing, you know, critiques of the singers that would come in and try to sing, and it really didn't matter what the singer did. Paula's like, good job. And.

And while Simon was so mean, and we definitely do not recommend critiquing anybody the way that Simon critiqued them on American Idol, he. I gotta say, his feedback was actually more valuable because good job. When it doesn't. Like, it just doesn't mean anything.

Like, it doesn't mean anything to say good job, or, you know, you did great, or you were so amazing and like. But to say, like, oh, your pitch was, you know, you sounded like a cat in a dryer on a dry cycle or something like that. And.

And so, like, okay, he says, I'm yowling. He. He's saying something about my pitch. I can learn from that. I can grow from that. I can take that feedback.

Whereas you can't really do anything with good job.

When you think about sort of the, you know, the.

We talked at the beginning of our conversation about all the incredible things that have been seismic shifts in the world in the last 10 years that would motivate you to want to update this book. You have your lived experience as educators, as parents, but you also have research in this book.

And I'm curious as to a couple of Pieces of research that perhaps you came upon that gave you pause that you included in this book about growth mindset.

Yeah. We added in the Science of Hope at the very beginning because we feel like there's an intersection between growth mindset and the science of hope.

Hope.

And, you know, like you said, there's the seismic shift within education. You may hear teachers indicating that students are. There's a lot of apathy. And so when there's apathy, we know that that's really beyond despair.

And so. And when we look at Science of Hope, we're looking at. That's the end. Like, obviously, people are feeling hopelessness when they're.

When you're seeing that. Those apathetic behaviors. And so kind of looking at how, you know, what does the science of hope. That.

Those abilities, those pathways for being able to get to a more hopeful, you know.

Yeah. When. When Heather says science of Hope, she means, like, a lot of people think hope is this kind of this, like, ephemeral, like, hard to.

It's a good, fuzzy feeling, like I'm. I'm hopeful. But you can't really define it. No, actually, it's a. Like, it's a process. Hope is, you know, having a goal in mind, having a way.

Path or a path to get to the thing that you want to get to. And if there is no path, if you cannot see a path for the thing that you want, then you do not have hope.

And that is what Heather means when she's talking about the science of hope. And so people are feeling pretty hopeless in a lot of scenarios right now.

And so at the beginning of the book, I mean, I gotta be honest, I had to write. We were writing this at a pretty hard time in our country, a hard time for teachers. And I felt pretty hopeless.

I was like, I don't even know what I can say to make this. To be a sow in this difficult time. And so we just. We went back to hope, like, if. If. If. You know, hope is why we do things.

I mean, hope has been driving human behavior since the beginning. And so. And when times are hard, we can look at. Look back at hope and say, you know, it doesn't. I think there's some line in there.

I was feeling really poetic, some line in there. I think I even called out Emily Dickens. And hope is the thing that. With feathers, you know, that never stops. And it's the song.

It's the song of us, the things that we hope for. And really, when you run out of hope, you end up in despair.

And I feel like people are feeling hopeless and we just kind of want to turn that around and, and yeah, and I think there's a line in there that said something like, like wherever two people are meeting and one person is helping another person grow, like that's a hopeful act that's teaching and learning.

And that has happened through millennia and were rubble strewn, war torn villages and Ivy League universities and on playgrounds and in grassy fields. I mean that can happen anywhere.

And so it was just trying to get us back in touch with feeling hopeful for the future because I know it's, it's kind of bleak for a lot of people right now.

And those pathways really do come.

Like that's where you marry in the growth mindset practices and messages and problem solving and strategies and that we can do something like what's in our circle of control and influence and what are the things that we can do moving forward that will help us to continue to grow.

I think we say hope is the why, growth mindset is the how. And then your classroom is where, where it happens. And so just have to, to remember that.

It seems really basic and maybe a little fluffy, but really it's, it's true. We have to have hope for our futures in order to want to put the effort in to, to do better. And so we've got to find ways to hope.

It's really a great way to summarize and to think about it for sure. This edition of your book also includes content on AI which of course is, you know, continues to grow at light speed and new classroom technologies.

So then how can parents at home encourage healthy, growth oriented use of technology at home?

Well, I think number one is to, to be able to talk about. Sorry, do you.

Well, I think it's just, there's that you're right, there's a lot that's coming out. There's continuous new developments in AI. I think it's teaching, you know, children how to use it effectively, how to discern.

I think having conversations with families to recognize with your. With families having conversations with their children about the information on what's available and how to navigate it.

I think that's part of the, the.

The just that continuous, continuous conversations. Yeah, it's. That's a, you know, you hear teachers talking about phones at school. I mean phones.

I, I feel, I felt deep guilt as a mother, like being on my phone and I had this realization a few years ago.

Like I remember my parents sitting around the kitchen table and like opening their mail from the day and they'd sit around once a month with their checkbook and their checkbook register. And I'm doing all that on my phone right now. Or my dad sitting at the table reading the newspaper, you know, the big newspaper covering his face.

And I'm like, I, I'm doing all that on my phone right now. And my kids only know that I'm on my phone. They don't know that I'm like reading the day's news and why that's important.

And they don't know that I'm like on the, our cell phone, you know, paying our cell phone bills or paying our water bill or whatever it is online or even your mortgage, you know, oh, I'm paying c. And so I started just talking about, about it with the kids. Like to show what, how you like healthily interact with your technology. AI is tricky. It's just so new. But I mean, I've definitely found it helpful.

There's one, one thing I talk about, we show Goblin tools. Have you heard of this?

It's a, it's kind of a. I, I don't, I don't know if it's AI generated, but essentially like, if kids are having a hard time doing something like clean my room and they kind of don't know where to start or the executive functioning is not functioning, it's. It's just such a cool little program.

You can go and you can type in the thing that you want to do and it will break down the task as, as granular as you need. So it's like first look around your room and look at, you know, find all the laundry, go pick up all the laundry.

And then when you're done with that, now go pick up all the trash. Now go pick up, you know, and so it'll just take you through step by step. I love those kind of tools.

I think for also, like growth oriented technology is if your kids.

My kids were big Minecraft fans and I loved Minecraft because they would build these just incredible like cities of their own making or countries, you know, and then they would, they would be on Minecraft and then their friends would be on their iPad at home in the same Minecraft world. And they would even be like role playing characters like I'll be, I'll be the mom and you be the.

And they're making their way through this town that they built. That is such a healthy way to use technology. And my kids.

So my, my son was a big Minecraft fan and now I play this game a lot called Marvel Rivals and it's basically just two minute battles over and over the same. If they're playing, you know, what is. What do I want to say? It's like, oh, from being like a creator to a consumer.

And so I think the best way to use technology in a healthy way at home, you have your boundaries, whatever those are. And then teach them to embrace, you know, make videos, use design programs.

Minecraft is a good way where you're building something and making something using your imagination as opposed to just kind of being a passive consumer. I also think tools like Duolingo, like learning a language, such a great way to use technology. And that's AI enabled now too. I guess.

So you have the AI. One thing I do love about AI in terms of learning is that it's very personalized to you. Right.

Be too personalized, become too much of a mirror for you. But such a great way to personalize. So like Duolingo, that's such a great example of like incremental learning.

Like you really do have to put in the effort to learn every single word and over time you've learned a language. Right. And so it's such a good example of incremental learning.

Yeah, no, I was going to say too, I think adding like Kamigo and all of that, the Khan Academy, some pieces that they're adding to level up in the ar the AI world.

They're really pioneering some really phenomenal things that again, kind of go back to allowing students, allowing children, allowing adults to go in and figure out what's the thing that I still want to continue to grow and develop or maybe have lagging skills in. And now I have this tutor that can help assist me.

And I just was thinking like, you know, with older kids too, it's helpful to be able to have an identify, you know, a topic of the day, kind of a current event of what's maybe some misinformation or disinformation that.

Please. Yes, that's a great way to model. Yeah. Technology at home. Tell them this is an example of misinformation or disinformation.

Show them how the same topic or the same event can be reported in different newspapers. The headlines even can.

Can just be radically different and how people use language to tell a narrative that they want to tell and help them be really crafty when it comes to ferreting out misinformation and figuring out what is true. What is true for them. Yeah. What is fact versus fiction. I love that that's so important.

Yeah.

And hopefully the parent is able to make that discernment in the first place because that's getting increasingly challenging as well.

I also love. I used AI a lot. AI a lot. My daughter is in middle. She's 12, so she's in middle school.

And I really had to brush up on fractions and adding multiplying fractions and divide. I did not do this in my daily life, so I had to get familiar with it.

And one thing I loved about having an AI tool like this past year was that I can make it really relevant to her. I can take her interest, I can put like a. A problem that she has to solve for class or concept she has to learn.

And I can ask AI to help me teach her in a way that incorporates, like, things she's interested in. So that could be like a movie. Like, could you create problem story or story problems using, like, characters of this movie?

Or can you use, you know, if she loves Legos, like, can we use Lego pieces to teach this concept or things like that? I think AI can be really useful. Useful for just personalizing. If you're.

If your kid at home is having a hard time learning a concept at school, you can personalize it for them with AI, which is, which is great.

And I think you can also just add that, like, as a parent, I want to be able to help my student do X, Y or Z, or I need to have this conversation.

Use AI as a thought partner to help you generate some strategies and ideas on how you can help leverage, you know, the tool to help you get to the goal that you're working on with your child.

And just bearing in mind, like, this is new.

None of us, I mean, even the people who say they know what they're doing in terms of AI, we've never lived in a world with AI, and so this is new and we're all learning it together.

And there'll be mistakes and mistakes are made and things happen, and we just have to keep pushing in and making it better and making sure that it's a tool that serves us and not a tool that we serve.

So is it ever too late to instill a growth mindset in a child? And what would you say to a parent who may not be feeling reassured about that?

I would absolutely say it's not too late.

No way. Never.

I even think, you know, my own parents, my grandparents, just even having the conversation, they didn't have the language maybe, you know, prior to Carol Dweck's work and so being able to identify these were practices.

This is what it took for the, you know, their Efforts, their resiliency and giving them some language around what a growth mindset, fixed mindset, how that shows up in our lives daily, maybe hourly and so, and how you combat that. But no, it's definitely never too late.

Yeah, yeah, I, I definitely don't think so. And like Heather said, beginning, you know, we're all a mixture of both. I can be very fixed mindset about certain exercise is a great.

I'm not, you know, I, oh, I, I, you could see so many examples of this life. I can have such a fixed mindset about exercise. Like I'm no good at it and I, I don't feel good when I do it and it makes my lungs hurt when I run.

And so that's a sign I should do. You know, I'm an epic excuse maker.

And I was scrolling on, I think TikTok or something a couple years ago, and this lady had crafted an entire workout routine that she did just laying on her couch watching tv. Like you could do the whole workout routine laying on your couch watching tv. And I'm like, you know what?

That's such a good example of like having a fixed mindset about something and then like making it work for you. And so I, you know, just talk your way through it, call it out when you see it and understand.

You know, we all have a fixed mindset, we all have a growth mindset, and we can choose which one to use in any given moment. And sometimes it makes, it takes work to make that choice. You have to be thoughtful about it. Sometimes you have to fake it till you make it. Yeah.

You know, you have, you have to just do, you know, you might be scared to do something and sometimes you just have to do it scared. But you know, I'd rather, I'd rather fail trying than not. And that's, that's something I say. Well, let's, let's, let's fail trying at least.

You know, something I say to my kids a lot, so we're almost out.

Of time, but I did want to ask you both very quickly if there's one small change that a parent could make with respect to adopting, adopting a growth mindset for themselves and their family and their children, what would you suggest that be?

I think when you're, and when you're running into those situations where you feel like you can't do it or your kid is indicating they can't do it. Remember the three letter word yet?

Yeah, we're not there yet. And accept, accept that.

I think Carol Dweck's book, our book talks a Lot about Growth Mindset Carol Dweck's book talks specifically about growth mindset from a parenting perspective. There's lots of great information and just catch yourself, talk about your failures and your mistakes as a parent. It's so hard for us to do that.

But yeah, be honest with your kid. You make I make mistakes all the time.

And so just owning up to it, talking it through it, that's, that's the best way that you're going to be able to instill those same behaviors and beliefs into your child.

Lots of great food for thought and insight. Annie Brock and Heather Hundley, co authors of The Growth Mindset 2nd edition, thank you so much for taking the time and spending it with us today.

Thank you. Thank you so much. To learn more about today's podcast, guest and topic, as well as other parenting.

Themes, visit whereparents talk.com.