Boost Your Child’s Self-belief: Promoting a Growth Mindset
This week in Education Support 4 Parents we’ve been thinking about self belief. I was privileged to chat to Lorna and Jac of Pursuit of Wisdom Coaching in the group all about how our beliefs are formed, and how we can challenge and change them. With this week being Children’s Mental Health Week, I’ve put together a few of my favourite strategies to help you improve self belief in your children, supporting a growth mindset along the way.
Allow them to learn from their mistakes
I’m not a great cook. This week I burnt the dinner, it wasn’t something that I have really cooked before, and I left the heat on the pan too high. However, instead of telling myself that I’m not a great cook, I made a note about what I need to do differently.
I loved that Jac and Lorna called it ‘marvellous mistakes’ in our chat, and that young people were keen to point out their mistakes and understand them.
A phrase that I use is that FAIL can mean ‘First Attempt In Learning’. This is the key, point out every time \when they learn from their mistakes. When they learn that they can make progress, when they understand that getting it wrong is going to help them learn, then instead of mistakes knocking them down it builds them up.
Encourage a growth mindset
A Growth Mindset is when you believe your talents and abilities can be developed. A Fixed Mindset is when you believe that you only have certain abilities and you can’t progress.
A great way to begin to build a growth mindset is with three letters, YET….. How often do we hear ourselves and our children say ‘I can’t do it’? Adding the three letter word ‘yet’ makes all the difference and gives belief that we will make it.
For example ‘I’m no good at maths’ or do you say ‘I’m no good at maths, yet!’ Start challenging everytime you hear someone with a fixed mindset, to change it to a growth mindset.
Look for opportunities to add yet onto the end of a sentence today and see what a difference it makes.
Praise Progress not outcomes
I loved the phrase ‘practice makes progress’ that Lorna and Jac mentioned in the live.
When I help young people through Online Maths Tutoring I put emphasis on the progress they are making. It’s so easy to praise outcomes, for example a grade A on a test, but instead praise progress.
Help them understand themselves
Self-belief can also be improved by understanding yourself. We have to stop our children comparing themselves to others and get them to know all about themself. That way they can understand how they learn, and not criticise themselves when they aren’t the same as others.
One way of doing this is through understanding different learning styles,I recommend looking at VARK, Dunn and Dunn and Honey and Mumford learning styles. You can get my learning styles guide for much more information.
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£7.99A Guide to Learning Styles This 27 page downloadable book explains three learning styles to help you understand your young person and how to work with them. Included are: questionnaires to identify your young person's preferences explanation of each preference...
Show them stories of different people who are successful by different routes
Our culture praises those who are academic and who take a route to earning money. However, if your child is practical or has other skills then this will knock their self-belief. So tell them all about wonderful people who took a different route.
Read all about Sophie Breslin who took a different route through education.
The Cambridge dictionary definition of self-belief is to trust in your own abilities, but that’s not easy, particularly if we have an underlying belief that we aren’t good enough. Lets do what we can to celebrate our differences, and teach our young people to believe in themselves.