DS8 needs to develop a growth mindset. Preferably immediately. Before I send him to an unpleasant boarding school out of spite (joking).

I've read about praising effort but are there any good resources for him? A book or website he can do himself and then we can talk about it would be great.

There is no "working to learn" anything with him right now. He either knows it or doesn't. And if he doesn't know it he generally thinks it isn't really necessary anyway. He is 2e and is the type that will go on all about the life cycle of some obscure animal but then mess up the order of the months of the year. And then have a straight faced argument about why it really isn't important to know the months in order!!

He worked really hard two years ago on learning to read. Now he just thinks he will learn by reading books, watching documentaries, going to museums and on field trips. If it doesn't stick after that? Well then to him it probably wasn't important anyway.

He sounds a lot like both of my 2e kids in the middle elementary school years. I don't think there's really anything to worry about re finding his internal motivation to learn - I think what you're seeing is the effect of the environment he's in, which is not really something that you'll be able to change for a few years.


Exactly - he's most likely in a classroom or environment where he can grasp some information easily and yet has other information (2e-related) that's difficult and that he struggles with.


Again, this is very much typical of how my 2e kids would act when faced with something that called on their area of challenge.

The middle elementary years were truly the most difficult times for my kids (post-diagnosis... pre-diagnosis wasn't exactly a cake-walk either lol). The tough thing about those middle elementary years was - we knew what was up, our children knew what was up, we'd fought the battles (and continued to), at school for remediation and services, and the school's response fell short, particularly for my ds. He desperately needed help with expressive language, he knew he needed help, he knew he had an IEP, and he knew that his teachers weren't helping him like he needed help even though they were supposed to be providing help per his IEP. He was also growing in awareness each year of the differences between himself and his peers, both with respect to the challenges and with respect to how slow classroom discussions were going vs how quickly he could grasp the content vs other students in areas he wasn't challenged. For my dyslexic dd, mid-elementary was particularly difficult because even though she was making progress with her reading she was still not as far ahead as the kids who were at her intellectual level, plus she'd developed a "non-liking" of reading that stuck with her even after she'd had sufficient remediation and was reading beyond grade level. The impact of not reading the same volume for years as the other kids was starting to show up in her vocabulary word bank that was more obvious than it was in the early elementary years.

Anyway, if all that sounds discouraging - don't be discouraged by it! Middle school was like night and day different re having access to appropriate level of challenge in the classroom, partly because they'd both grown into their accommodations much more by then and their 2nd e didn't hold them back from higher-level classwork anymore. School still wasn't easy thanks to their 2nd e, but access to higher level of intellectual classwork helped put them in a place where their *intrinsic* motivation began to show.

Just because you don't see it now doesn't mean that your ds is in need of motivation or a growth mindset. It's most likely there already but just not obvious due to the environment his 2e situation places him in.

Hang in there!

polarbear

One of my concerns regarding the growth mindset is that its unclear how much of of the growth mindset is supposed to come from just changing the wording of how you present an assignment/work product vs changing the assignment to better challenge a student. Hearing people, especially those really into the growth mindset, talk about what is needed, they sound more like the former. But I suspect that for gifted students, the later is as important or more important.

I don't have an opinion wrt more typical students, but for a gifted student I question have valuable it is to say "oh you worked really hard on this" if they can show a good result without working hard. The growth mindset should as much arise from challenging work as from the type of feedback you give.

This is exactly my 2e son's experience. Elementary school was really challenging because we discovered his dyslexia, then worked (outside of school) to remediate it. The school wouldn't do anything because he wasn't far enough behind. His defense mechanism was to act like he didn't care about school. Teachers really liked him, but because dyslexia can look like kids can't read or write, they didn't encourage him to do better-- they thought he just wasn't all that smart.

In middle school he started getting the intellectual challenge he needed and started to engage with his school work and want to get good grades. He went from an average student to far above grade level in every subject.

Now in high school, he tested into every honors class, including English. And HE is the one who asked to take the placement tests. And he is very motivated to do well.

Last time I saw his 5th grade teacher, I told her how well he was doing and she just kind of stared at me in disbelief. There's no way the child she taught is the same kid he is in school now-- so she probably doesn't believe me. Whatever.

My advice is to keep supporting your child and realize that at this point, school is SO MUCH harder for him than for other kids. He's only 8, so it's not that surprising that he is reluctant to do what's really hard, especially when he sees that it's not hard for other kids like him. But he needs to feel good about himself while he's fixing the 2e part, so make sure you're giving him what he needs and help him find non-academic passions to boost his self-worth.

Thank you for the thoughtful replies. I was really frustrated with him last night. I know he has a hard time. We talked a lot today about school and what works and what doesn't. We came up with some ideas. I am going to look into some of what we discussed and talk to his teachers. Thanks again.

When my DSS was learning to read (He has ADHD, but is not gifted) it was always drama and fighting.

I suggested that instead of hard consequences for drama, we impose soft ones that weren't so jarring.

If he did his 15 minutes of reading without fighting, he could watch his 30 minutes of cartoons. If there was fighting, he could still watch the cartoons, but we muted them and put on closed captioning.

It really helped him, actually, because it applied his theory of "ill learn to read, really, I promise" and we said, "we will make sure of it" without it being punitive. And he still got something he wanted, we just met him halfway.

I agree.

I have no idea if this is exclusively a 2e thing. I expect that it is not, in fact-- my DD has spent a lot of years UN-learning what this kind of rhetoric seems to have done to her...
"I'm so proud of how much effort you put into this"

"You worked so hard!"

"Wow-- your effort really paid off here,"

etc. because it TOLD her what she knew internally was not true. The truth was that she wasn't working hard even remotely, because she honestly had no idea how. Or that such a thing might ever be a thing, I have to speculate. It was effectively gaslighting to her to use that growth mindset talk with her when she actually WAS NOT working hard-- at much of anything. Penmanship, I guess. {sigh}

I guess I needed it framed this way to recognize that so succinctly. Thank you, Malraux, for verbalizing this.

FWIW, her attitude was pretty awful toward schoolwork for a large number of years. From age 8 until about 12, in fact. She was still making great grades-- when she bothered. But it was an ongoing battle to get her to put forth even the minimal effort needed to get that. I honestly do NOT believe that she has any 2e issues. I've seen a lot of college students compensate for them, and she doesn't seem to be doing that now that she actually took the effort to learn to write well. She writes VERY fluently and rapidly, and doesn't seem to have any real weaknesses in the skill set. But ohhhhhh, the tears that it took to get her motivated to make that effort.

This old post may answer your question.

Have you read the book mindset by Carol Dweck? It is a fairly quick read and rather interesting. Unfortunately, although many have not read it, that does not hinder them from critiquing it.

Old threads discussing mindset, its misapplications, and ideas misattributed to it include:
- Against the growth mindset April 09, 2015
- What would you ask Carol Dweck? July 15, 2015
- Carol Dweck Revisits the 'Growth Mindset' September 24, 2015

Meanwhile, KJP, I wish you all the best with stimulating your child's curiosity, motivation, and desire to learn!
Along those lines, this old post mentions a possible relationship to perfectionism and fear of making mistakes... and includes a link to a thread containing a crowd-sourced list of books on developing resilience and overcoming perfectionism.

As a parent of an 8 year old boy who is really smart, I might have some input relevant to this. My DS knows his abilities and has a good idea of what he is naturally capable of and what takes much effort and learning. In his case, small motor tasks are like pulling teeth - he cannot cut, color, paint, write etc with ease and needs a person at his elbow to constantly push him to complete these tasks.

Kids like these follow the path of least resistance and need to be taught explicitly how to work hard to learn something that is not easy for them. My son is used to most things coming easily to him that he does not know how to handle a situation where the learning does not come naturally or is very challenging.

My son pursues 2 activities that teach him how to "work to learn" - a musical instrument study at a fairly advanced level with a teacher who sets the bar high and a martial arts at a high level with a Master Instructor who expects perfection. His experiences with them on a weekly basis include taking constant criticism (they are helpful, well intentioned and constructive, but still criticism), to be unable to do something well despite explicit instruction and close scrutiny, to actively monitor himself and change details of his technique and recheck with his teacher if he has incorporated the feedback, to do all of those under the pressure of an expert's watchful eye and worst of all (for him) to not forget what he has learned and to make the changes to his techniques permanent (being "present" and focused for long periods of time).

So, you could try explicitly teaching your DS to work to learn. Starting with a skill that he is not good at and working on it until he can master it and then heaping on the praise for his efforts. This might model what it is like to "work to learn" for him.

I am not sure what the "growth mindset" means - I have not read the book. Praising the effort and not the intellectual abilities, does not work for my child. He knows his strengths and many times when I praise him for a 100% score in his math or grammar tests (his areas of strengths where he is working ahead of his grade level) he tells me that he did not study for those tests and that it would be unfair to accept the praise and give the impression that he worked hard for the result. And when I praise him for learning his new Form in martial arts and for putting in considerable effort and considerable time on it - he still refuses the praise because to him, the skill did not come naturally and he slogged on it and it is still not perfect, so, not worthy of praise in his opinion.
When kids have a high degree of self awareness, I find that praise for effort does not matter a lot (in our case). Instead, helping them look at long term goals, helping them plan towards those goals, supporting them and cheering them on helps.

It's on the pile to be read, maybe third from the top, if only for cultural immersion if nothing else.

Moreover, I'm not sure it specifically addresses solving problems that I have. That is, yeah, it tells me that ds5 needs a greater challenge to avoid a fixed mindset; and i have certainly heard him say stuff like "this is easy for me cuz I'm so smart". But he also needs it to avoid boredom, stay engaged, and succeed academically.

Lastly, growth mindset as taught by dweck and growth mindset as implemented in the field can be very different things.

I can relate to the attitude. My 9 year old says that he is going to quit school after 5th grade and become an onion farmer and run a roach motel. He said that education beyond those grades will not be necessary for his occupational choice. Yesterday he wrote a story and in the story he mentioned the words "rebel" and "boring teachers" several times and then the school exploded because the students bombed it. One of my (sort of) friends is a principal and he said that DS probably would have been suspended or had some sort of consequence if he had written that in school. Which I think is really dumb. So I had to tell him to NEVER write about bombing a school or any other kind of violent action in a story, because he will get in trouble, and that's going to somehow persuade him to have a better attitude in school, when he can't even express his thoughts in a fictional story? He is also 2e and everything seems to be way too easy or way too difficult. He complains constantly about how the teachers order him around and treat him like a robot. He is compliant but the teachers don't like his scowling or his attitude.

Defiantly remind him not to write about that kind of stuff at school. My DS got in trouble in 1st grade for something he had written. I can't remember the details but it talked about death and implied suicide. Honestly my boy at 1st grade was fairly happy but contemplated issues other kids his age didn't. And because he was only 6 didn't really have sense that it wasn't an appropriate topic for school.

I had to go in and have an embarrassing and awkward discussion with the principal. It was school rules that I had to be brought in to talk about it.

Oh yes, we have been through the "suicide" ordeal as well. I got phone calls, emails, he had to go to the school social worker, etc. He told them he wasn't really serious and there was "only" a 1 percent chance he would do it. Geez! Now everyone is always so uptight about him.

...Besides the mention of bombs (and knowing he obviously didn't mean it), I think the whole onion farmer thing is pretty cute and creative. After all, there's a market for everything.

I thought so too. I asked him how he's going to buy the land and equipment for the onion farm and he said he'll just use a shovel. I suggested he use his big brain to become an investment banker, he can make a million bucks and then he'll have money to buy the land. But he has to go to college. He suggested I give him a dollar and he'd put it in the stock market right now.

this is an additude I've had before, and often times it was because of frustration
And when it comes to the order of the months? I only recently got that down because i started working as an assistant teacher at a preschool, and they recite it every day