I believe most parents have heard of growth thinking and fixed thinking, right?
The concept of "growth thinking" comes from psychologist Carol Dweck's "Seeing the Growing Self", in which he proposed the two concepts of growth thinking and fixed thinking.
In 1978, she did an intelligence experiment that found that children behave in two very different ways when faced with problems.
She prepared a set of intellectual toys for the child, which gradually increased in difficulty, and as a result, she found that:
The first kind of child, as the difficulty increases, the failure increases, they not only do not become discouraged, but more and more active, they will say", "Am I doing something wrong?" There must be a better way", or cheer yourself up "I almost made it". Although eventually they will give up, they will achieve better results and persist for longer.
But the other kind of child is different, as the difficulty increases, the failure increases, they will make excuses for their failures, such as "this is too difficult, we can't do it", or complain "This is not fun at all, I don't want to play anymore", and eventually they often give up quickly and throw toys there to play with others.
Carol Dweck named these two very different ways of thinking "growth thinking" and "fixed thinking."
People with a growth mindset, the courage to challenge, not afraid of failure, they will see failure as the cornerstone of success, think that as long as they work hard, they can succeed.
Fixed thinking, on the other hand, is afraid of challenges and tends to back down when faced with them. They blame their own ingenuity for success, believing that failure is their own lack of ability or bad luck.
Comparing these two ways of thinking, it is clear that children with growth mindsets are more likely to succeed, so most parents also expect to develop a child with a growth mindset.
Unfortunately, the current educational philosophy adopted by parents determines that it is easier for parents to cultivate children with fixed thinking
Why it is easy for current parents to cultivate children with fixed thinking
The reason is simple, because of the current negative education that parents generally adopt.
The so-called negative education refers to parents paying more attention to the shortcomings of their children, and then criticizing and denying the children and asking the children to correct them. For example, when parents help their children write homework, parents tend to be more likely to see the problems that their children show in their homework, such as wandering and ink, and rarely can not see the advantages of their children, which is negative education.
So why do I say that negative education tends to lead parents to cultivate children with fixed thinking? Quite simply, because negative education makes it easier for children to become fixed thinking.
Under negative education, parents have a negative attitude towards mistakes, so parents will correct them, so parents will criticize and deny their children. And when the child does not correct it in time, the parents will even scold the child.
In other words, parents are conveying an attitude to their children: mistakes are bad, don't make mistakes. Therefore, the child will also have an instinctive rejection of mistakes, because he knows that if he makes mistakes, he will be criticized and scolded by his parents.
The fear of making mistakes also determines that children do not dare to try. And not daring to try, afraid of failure, is just a typical manifestation of fixed thinking.
Therefore, when parents always educate their children with the concept of negative education, children will inevitably become fixed thinking.
In fact, for parents, this attitude of parents to mistakes is the performance of fixed thinking, then in the process of education, parents will pass this way of thinking to their children, so that children become fixed thinking, afraid of failure. When a child grows up in this fixed-minded environment, can you still expect him to come out of the mud without staining?
Therefore, as long as parents use the concept of negative education, children are likely to be fixed thinking.
Therefore, if parents want to cultivate children with growth-oriented thinking, they must abandon the concept of negative education and adopt an education that tolerates children's mistakes, and our affirmative parenting is precisely an education that tolerates children's mistakes.
Affirmative parenting that tolerates children's mistakes
Different from negative education, our affirmative parenting concept believes that children have no problems and want to become excellent, but some factors cause children to make mistakes, so the fault is not in the children, then of course, we do not need to criticize and accuse children and ask children to correct.
The affirmative parenting concept has a natural decision on the child's trust attitude, and it has an inclusive attitude towards the child's mistakes. And the parents' tolerance of mistakes also determines that children will not be afraid of making mistakes and will not think that making mistakes is bad. Of course, this means that children are more daring to try adventures.
At the same time, for children's mistakes, our affirmative parenting is to help children correct mistakes and teach children the right way to solve mistakes. Therefore, as long as you follow the affirmative parenting philosophy, you are a parent with a growth mindset. Often using affirmative parenting concepts to solve children's problems is equivalent to letting children be educated by growth-oriented thinking, and they will become a growth-oriented thinking child.
For example, I recently taught my children to practice words.
The child's writing is very poor, often crooked, I also want to criticize and accuse the child, but I know that this is useless, because the child writes poorly, the fundamental reason is that she has practiced less, and she has not specifically learned to practice words, so it is normal to write badly, not that I criticize and scold her for two sentences, she can change it immediately. Following the affirmative parenting concept, I discussed with the child how to solve her problems, make her aware of her problems, and then set up a daily practice time and learn some writing skills, so that the child's words will slowly get better little by little.
In this process, I not only passed on to the child a tolerant mentality of mistakes, but also taught her how to deal with problems, which is exactly the manifestation of growth thinking. So when I often use affirmative parenting to solve children's problems, I will guide children to slowly become a growth-oriented thinking child.
Summary
Today I have listed one of the advantages of our affirmative parenting concept, that is, it can equip children with a growth mindset. As long as parents follow the concept of affirmative parenting, children are more likely to grow into a child with a growth mindset.
You may also have noticed, how do we affirmative upbringing have so many advantages?
It is not that I am deliberately creating, but because affirmative parenting follows our psychological and behavioral laws, and conforms to the objective laws of our world, it will show these advantages, which is why I have always said that "affirmative parenting is the most ideal education".
If you want to learn the complete affirmative parenting concept, you can pay attention to my eponymous public account to learn