Austin Scholar #107: How to teach your kid to have a growth mindset
& why I find skiing so fun
Hey, y'all!
This week from Austin Scholar...
Austin’s Anecdote: Why I find skiing so fun
How to teach your kid to have a growth mindset
Scholar’s Sources: What I’ve been up to…
Happy spring break everyone!! I hope y’all have had as much fun as I did. I got to go skiing again – and the best part is that my mom and sister came with me. Normally I just tag along on my best friends’ family trips, but this year I was able to sway my family to come along, with promises of a hot tub and a warm lodge. I skied my heart out – from the moment the lifts opened to the last chair – and it, unfortunately, ended with me getting sick :(
So this week’s newsletter is a little short, but I hope it’s still just as useful.
Austin’s Anecdote: Why I find skiing so fun
I’m obsessed with skiing.
It’s not something I get to do often (since I live in, you know, Austin) but I’m always dreaming about it. And it’s kinda weird that I like it so much.
Because I’m not the world’s best skier and I’m still prone to falling (I have a huge bruise on my knee from this last trip). I make mistakes and sometimes I have bad form when I’m nervous.
And skiing is, like, public. People can watch you mess up. Other skiers on the chairlift can laugh at you when you fall.
And me? I’m not used to doing things I’m not amazing at (thanks to the perfectionist in me). As much as I’m working on it, failing in public is not something I actively look to do.
But when I ski, I go right under the chairlift in perfect view to be judged. I go with people who are ten times better than I am and I still enjoy every moment.
It’s something I just have fun with – and because of that, I’m able to look at my mistakes as something to learn from. Falling doesn’t mean I’m a bad skier, it just means I have more to learn.
(When I was in ski school, my instructor told me about his favorite run on the mountain – the hardest run – that none of us were even allowed to attempt because we weren’t good enough yet. This weekend, I finally did it. I have proof of how much I’ve grown since my ski school years – and know I’ll continue to get better.)
So the question really is: why do I love skiing so much?
Because I have a growth mindset about it.
How to teach your kid to have a growth mindset
Growth mindset: what is it? And how can you teach it?
According to the University of Phoenix, a growth mindset is “the belief that one can learn and grow.” Its opposite is a fixed mindset, which is “the belief that a person’s ability to learn and improve cannot extend beyond a certain point.”
Basically, it’s the difference between “I didn’t do well on that math test, so I’m going to study more for the next one” and “I didn’t do well on that math test, so I must be bad at math”.
Now, how can you teach your kid to have a growth mindset? I have a few recommended steps and strategies: