The excerpt below contains advice I will pass on to our kids
to help them with their children and any children they will interact with.
‘Opting Out of the
'Rug Rat Race' - For success in the long run, brain power
helps, but what our kids really need to learn is grit’ by Paul Tough – appeared in the Saturday,
September 08, 2012, Wall Street Journal
‘So what can
parents do to help their children develop skills like motivation and
perseverance? The reality is that when it comes to noncognitive skills, the
traditional calculus of the cognitive hypothesis—start earlier and work
harder—falls apart. Children can't get better at overcoming disappointment just
by working at it for more hours. And they don't lag behind in curiosity simply
because they didn't start doing curiosity work sheets at an early enough age.
Instead, it
seems, the most valuable thing that parents can do to help their children
develop noncognitive skills—which is to say, to develop their character—may be
to do nothing. To back off a bit. To let our children face some adversity on
their own, to fall down and not be helped back up. When you talk today to
teachers and administrators at high-achieving high schools, this is their
greatest concern: that their students are so overly protected from adversity,
in their homes and at school, that they never develop the crucial ability to
overcome real setbacks and in the process to develop strength of character.
American
children, especially those who grow up in relative comfort, are, more than
ever, shielded from failure as they grow up. They certainly work hard; they
often experience a great deal of pressure and stress; but in reality, their
path through the education system is easier and smoother than it was for any
previous generation. Many of them are able to graduate from college without
facing any significant challenges. But if this new research is right, their
schools, their families, and their culture may all be doing them a disservice
by not giving them more opportunities to struggle. Overcoming adversity is what
produces character. And character, even more than IQ, is what leads to real and
lasting success.’
—Adapted from "How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity
and the Hidden Power of Character" by Paul Tough, which has just been
published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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