How to teach a child not to give up?

Strength of character is the willingness not to give up, and day after day, month after month, to put time and energy into your work. Of course, there are many other valuable qualities – for example, the ability to get along with people, curiosity or kindness. All of them are significant in different spheres of life. But in the field of personal achievements, firmness of character plays a decisive role.

For several years, this quality has been researched by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth. To begin with, she interviewed high school students in Chicago schools and watched their learning process. And I found out that perseverance and perseverance play a more significant role in achieving success than talent and intelligence. It is even more curious that the strength of character is often inversely proportional to the amount of talent.

Angela Lee Duckworth continued to collect information and analyze research by other psychologists that could explain what makes some people more stubborn than others. What hinders and what helps to develop this quality?

Here are five conclusions she came to. They are addressed primarily to parents, because it is easiest to form an attitude to perseverance and instill industriousness at an early age. How exactly?

1. Perseverance can only be taught by perseverance. If you want your child to grow up persistent, pay attention to how much passion and effort you yourself put into achieving your goals. To a certain extent, children copy the behavior of their fathers and mothers, often trying to catch up and overtake them. But this only happens when parents try to maintain a balance between demanding and supportive parenting styles. Between respect and love, on the one hand, and the observance of strict discipline, on the other.

A child who feels parental support and respect might say something like this: “I know my parents will help me when I have problems. They talk to me a lot. They believe that I have the right to my point of view, respect my personal space and give me a certain freedom.

A child of demanding parents might say something like this: “My parents think that I should follow the rules of the family. They tell me how I can do something better. When I do something wrong, my parents don’t punish me. They expect me to do my very best, even if it’s very difficult.”

American psychologist Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues drew attention to the effectiveness of combining these styles when working with famous athletes, artists and scientists.

According to him, almost without exception, all demanding but loving parents were “an example of a work ethic, they themselves showed how to work, put all their efforts to successfully complete the business they were doing, always believed that first work, and then entertainment, and personal example showed children the need for hard work in order to achieve distant goals.

What’s more, most parents felt it was perfectly natural to let their kids do what they loved. By the way, an example of perseverance, as well as a supportive-demanding style of upbringing, can be demonstrated not by parents, but by other authoritative adults – teachers, brothers, grandparents, coaches.

“Not all the stubborn and successful people I interviewed had a wise father and mother,” notes Angela Lee Duckworth. “But everyone remembered some person who appeared at the right time, provided support, gave courage and inspired to great things.”

2. Believe in development. To cultivate perseverance, it is important to believe in the possibility of change, in the fact that each person is able to improve his mental abilities. Orienting yourself and your children to development was suggested by Carol Dweck, a professor at Stanford University.

Her experiment showed that when children learn how the brain works and understand that it changes and grows in response to challenges, they are more likely to persevere after failure. They do not believe that failure is a permanent state.

Conversely, people with a fixed mindset (“no one can increase their intelligence”) tend to take failure as evidence that they are worse than others. They often quit what they started and quickly lose faith in themselves.

3. Attend additional classes. A ballet studio, a theater club, a basketball section, playing the piano … Any organized activity (other than a kindergarten or school) led by an adult (ideally demanding, but attentive) contributes to the development of strength of character.

Angela Lee Duckworth stresses the importance of this activity combining the two attributes of challenge and joy: “When children play sports, play a musical instrument, or rehearse a scene in a play, they feel both the challenge and the joy of the activity. There is no other activity in their life that is guaranteed to be challenging, but also intrinsically motivated. For example, studying at school is not easy, but not all children like it. Texting friends is interesting, but not at all difficult. But what can you say about ballet classes? Ballet can be both challenging and interesting at the same time.”

It is also fundamentally important that these classes last more than a year, because perseverance is manifested in a purposeful action that has a long-term result. Columbia University psychologist Margot Gardner has done an interesting study on the impact of years of extracurricular activities on students. She tracked the lives of 11 American teenagers until they were 26 years old.

Here is her conclusion: children who attended any club or section for two years, rather than one, were much more likely to earn more money after college. Curiously, the type of extracurricular activities did not matter. The main thing is that these months of training should be crowned with some kind of result.

4. Grow perseverance from within. It is more difficult for an adult who quits what he started too early and often, whether it is sports or frequent changes of jobs, to “acquire” endurance and perseverance than a child. However, it is possible, and you can develop this quality both from within and with the help of your environment.

What does inner work on oneself consist of?

• Development of own interests, search for a business that can become a vocation, a passion.
• Mastering new skills, looking for tasks that exceed the possibilities.
• Search for goals that will be above personal interests.
• The desire to believe, even if it seems that nothing can be done.

5. Find an environment that values ​​perseverance. Leaders, coaches, mentors, friends – people with a strong character can also help us become more persistent. Find a group, a team, a team where perseverance is cultivated, and join it.

If you are a leader and want people in your organization to become more resilient, create and maintain a culture of resilience. The culture and environment in which we live (or with which we associate ourselves) have a huge impact on us.

Over time (and under fortunate circumstances), the values ​​and norms of the community we belong to become our own. Gradually, the phrase “That’s how we do it here, and that’s why” turns into “That’s how I do it, and that’s why.”

Hard case rule

In her family, Angela Lee Duckworth maintains the Hard Case Rule, which helps all family members to persevere in their chosen activity. It consists of four items.

1. Everyone, including mom and dad, should be doing something difficult. A difficult task is one that requires daily conscious practice. Mom is engaged in research in psychology and yoga. Dad tries to be a more successful developer and runs in the morning. The eldest daughter Amanda chose playing the piano as her difficult business. The youngest, Lucy, is doing ballet.

2. You can quit the business – but not before the end of the school year or game season, or while there are paid lessons. Starting to do something, you can not quit before you have achieved something. You have to finish what you started. You can’t quit just because the teacher yelled at you or class interferes with enjoying something else. Don’t quit on a day when things are going badly.

3. Everyone chooses his own difficult business, depending on his interests.

4. In high school, a fourth criterion will appear: each of the girls must do one more thing or continue what she is already doing (piano and cello) for at least two more years.