Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What would you ask Carol Dweck?

I think I would want to ask her this -

A basic tenet of mindset development seems to be that praise should be reserved for truly effort-based accomplishments. But, there is a body of science that shows that executive function and impulse control are skills that develop asynchronously - and later - in gifted children as compared to neurotypical children. Within these asynchronously developed skills lies the ability to accept failure and continue on - e.g., losing a game while still enjoying playing and wanting to play again. How do you tailor mindset development strategies to match a child's zone of proximal development with respect to executive function? That is - how do you know when a child is truly making an effort on tasks that require executive function and impulse control? By analogy - how do you make sure your grit and resilience expectations ("You rushed through this work, and could have done much better.") aren't equivalent to expecting a child to run, before she has the capacity to walk?