9 Important Questions To Ask your Child For Growth Mindset

When children have a growth mindset, they can accept and embrace challenges, take feedback, practice and put in more effort when they fail and are open to taking risks and trying new things. The basic premise is that their efforts can influence how their talents and abilities develop.

The Danger of a Fixed Mindset

On the contrary, if they have a fixed mindset, they tend to see their most basic traits such as intelligence as non-changeable. They are more likely to choose easy tasks so they won’t fail or look bad in front of others, are less open to trying new things, use the ‘I am just not good at it’ reasons to explain disappointments and are not able to receive feedback well.
Promoting the growth mindset in your kids facilitates their ability to learn new things, recover from setbacks and focus on finishing up what they started.

Questions to ask to support the growth mindset in your kids

Here are 9 important questions (based on specific contexts) to support the growth mindset in your kids:

1. WHEN THEY HAVE FAILED: What did you learn from that? How can you apply it next time you have a similar situation?
2. WHEN A TASK IS DIFFICULT: What other ways can you try to approach that task?
3. WHEN THEY ARE NOT GOOD AT SOMETHING: What could you do to get better at it? What could you practice?
4. WHEN THEY ARE NOT THE BEST: Who can you learn from?
5. WHEN DON’T THEY KNOW WHAT TO DO: What is one small step you could do to start?
6. WHEN THE TASK IS TOO EASY: How can we make this more challenging for you?
7. WHEN THEY HAVE ACCOMPLISHED SOMETHING: What have you learnt about success? What are your next goals?
8. WHEN THEY DON’T AGREE WITH THE RULES: What new ideas/suggestions do you have?
9. WHEN THEY ARE NOT HAPPY WITH THEIR OWN WORK: Who can you ask for some honest feedback?

Attribute to: Shaen Yeo (Founder, Positive Education)

Here’s another child development article for you: Unlocking your child’s full potential