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> Second, kids don't acquire all their information about themselves from their parents and teachers. By the time they reach early elementary school, kids, espec
by mlyle 3y ago
> Second, kids don't acquire all their information about themselves from their parents and teachers. By the time they reach early elementary school, kids, especially smart ones, know whether they are trying harder than their peers and whether they're succeeding more than their peers. They know what was easy and what was hard from their own experience, and they have a theory of mind and if an adult tells them something at odds with their experience they could just devalue that adult's credibility.
We're not saying to praise hard work that wasn't. We're saying to give more kudos for good outcomes from effort than good outcomes from natural talent.
The reasons to do this:
- Eventually things always get hard enough that you can't carry the day on talent alone. If you haven't learned to persevere in things that don't come naturally by then, you're going to have a bad time.
- If your self-image is tied too much to ability, then every new task is a potential to fall down and "lose" what others consider special about you without much opportunity for gain; a lot of bright people avoid things that could be tests of their ability because of this fragile self-image.
There's no simple word trick that can accomplish this alone, but framing rewards around effort is one thing (along with seeking appropriate challenge, etc) that can help.
And if you've got a kid who's really talented, it's still likely to be problematic. My oldest is accelerated 4-6 years in math (depending on your baseline) and still breezes through everything with very low effort. But the few times that he's encountered something that's hard for him, he's folded and shown avoidant behavior very quickly compared to peers. He has not needed to build the skills, and characteristics of self-image, needed to try hard at difficult things and it shows.
- saiya-jin 3y agoOne of worst failures/dropouts I saw at university were the guys smart enough to do entire high school without any significant effort (ie my roommate left books at school and aced it, in stark contrast with me). Then they eventually reached subject on uni where some serious effort was required even from them, and many just couldn't get themselves through the suck. Unlike say me who was already used to put effort into getting through, and just increased it a bit when it mattered.
- gnicholas 3y agoYes, this is why it's important for all students to be given the chance to be challenged, so that they can't skate through HS, which sets (some of) them up to be caught off-guard by university.
- jml78 3y agoThis was me but I eventually realized that just showing up to my university classes and paying attention was enough to pass. My issue was that I didn’t even want to put the effort into attending classes. I failed one class almost every semester due to not showing up. High school I didn’t even pay attention in class and still passed without any issue. I never learned how to study. And ultimately knowing how to study doesn’t really help you in the software world IMO.
- willprice89 3y agoIt depends what you're working on. Good luck implementing a functioning network stack if you can't buckle down and work your way through a few dozen RFCs.
- jml78 3y agoI think it depends on what you mean by studying. My view is that college studying is having to memorize everything required to pass tests. I can easily read RFCs and then apply that knowledge. But I don't need to memorize shit because if I need a detail, I can just go grab the RFC again and grab the info I need. It is why when I was in college, all my lab work in any subject, computer science, chemistry, etc, was my strength. I could put the knowledge to use. But if I had to memorize shit to regurgitate on a test, I had issues.