Growth Mindset

When I first became a mom, I was under the fixed mindset assumption regarding my children's educational achievement. I was driven by results when it came to their education instead of their efforts. It was not until my youngest daughter, who is brilliant, started to struggle in the fifth grade. My husband and I started to notice her lack of interest in participating in school, challenges, and learning anything new. We did everything we knew as parents to do to help her succeed, not recognizing that how we were so-called helping her was part of the problem. We were not trying to help her learn, but we were pressuring her to bring home A's & B's. After several failed attempts, we decided to get her tested, luckily for us, the school my daughter attended offered several different types of learning test. The results showed that our daughter, although failing fifth grade, was learning on a sixth-grade level. We were confused and intrigued at the same time. The counselor facilitating the test also revealed that our daughter was a kinesthetic learner, which basically means she is a hands-on learner. We started to focus more of how to get to her goal of understanding the material. We begin to applaud her efforts not her grades. In addition, we enrolled her in a home school program, which allowed us the opportunity to teach the she learns. We observed how her confidence increased. She realized she was not dumb or a failure. She learned to embrace the way she learned and her love for school returned. She is now attending a public high school and doing well in her studies. 

One issue with the fixed mindset theory is that no two people learn the same way.  Carol Dweck, stated in her video that abilities can be developed, but this is not the case with institutionalized education where every student is taught the same. They are unable to develop their abilities in this type of system. They are forced into a fixed system of learning and labeled if they are unable to comply. Originally, it was suggested to us that our daughter may have been dyslexic, but my husband and I knew that was not the case, which is why we insisted that she was given a learning style test. Unfortunately, many parents are unaware of these tests and are ignorant regarding the growth mindset theory.

I have trouble with my memory, but I have been successful in school because I strongly believe that I can overcome with effort, strategy, and evaluating my process. One might not be proficient in a subject or area that they struggled in but can at least gain a basic understanding on it. Therefore, I believe we can improve and that anything can be learned to some extent.