Tom Tozer and Bill Black pose for a portrait Monday, March 28, 2016 at the Chattanooga Times Free Press.Angela Duckworth, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance," says that something besides IQ separates the best and worst students.
"Some of my strongest performers did not have stratospheric IQ scores," she says. "Some of my smartest kids weren't doing so well I was firmly convinced that every one of my students could learn the material if they worked hard and long enough."
Duckworth discovered that doing well in school and in life depends on much more than one's ability to learn quickly and easily. It wasn't intelligence, good looks or physical health.
She says grit is what helps to determine success. She defines grit as the "disposition to pursue very long-term goals with passion and perseverance. Grit is sticking with things over the long term and then working very hard at it If you've never had to try very hard, you've never had to get up after setbacks and failures, then maybe you don't cultivate that capacity."
How do you instill grit in children?
The best idea she has heard, Duckworth says, is something called growth mindset, developed by professor Carol Dweck at Stanford University. It's the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed; it can change with your effort.
As Dweck describes it, mindsets are beliefs about yourself and your basic qualities. In a fixed mindset, people believe that qualities like intelligence or talent are fixed. They spend their time documenting intelligence and talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success - without effort.
In a growth mindset, people believe their abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. This view creates a love of learning and resilience that are essential for accomplishment.
Dweck has shown that when kids learn about how the brain grows in response to challenge, they're much more likely to persevere. Believing that change is possible helps kids be grittier, and grit helps them accomplish things.
"The view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life," Dweck says.
So how do we help our kids survive setbacks, complete tasks, focus on projects and develop what our parents used to call "stick-to-itiveness"?
Certainly our children's achievement is defined by a number of factors - environmental, cultural, social. We can help them move forward by setting challenging expectations, but let them make their own decisions. We can assist them in discovering their capacity to learn and change, and teach them that effort is an important part of success. Then to top it off, we provide unconditional love.
As Duckworth says, "Not letting setbacks disappoint you, finishing what you begin, doing things with focus, I think that those are things I would aspire to or hope for all our children. I think that achieving a personal standard of excellence, pushing yourself farther than you thought you could, you know, getting up after disappointment, these are things that are true for all of us."
Tom Tozer and Bill Black are authors of "Dads2Dads: Tools for Raising Teenagers." Like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter at Dads2Dadsllc. Contact them at tomandbill@Dads2Dadsllc.com.