PsychNotes Index

More PsychNotes: Performance, Success and Goal Attainment

Helping Children Achieve Their Potential
by Monica A. Frank, PhD

Parents have good intentions and want to help their children become the best they can be. However, indiscriminate praise is not the way to help children. In the video “How To Help Every Child Fulfil Their Potential” Carol Dweck explains how praising intelligence creates a fixed mindset in children which causes a pattern of avoidant behavior. Children with a fixed mindset wish to avoid mistakes and do not seek out challenges due to fear of failure.

However, parents who praise children for the effort and who express the importance of valuing struggle create a growth mindset in children. The growth mindset fosters greater effort in children which leads to fulfilling potential. These children see mistakes as a natural outcome of challenges and something to learn from rather than avoid.