Travel schooling: One mistake at a time
I became enamoured with the idea of a growth mindset through Carol Dweck’s famous TED talk. She pioneered the idea that our minds are expandable, much like a rubber band which stretches. Her work dispels the age-old myth that we are born with a given static level of intelligence, rather she agrues that we can become good at anything with practice. Moreover, a belief that we can improve allows us to attempt harder tasks and keep trying for long enough to become competent.
Allowing kids to witness their elastic mind without limitations
Sanaa has become obsessed with the concept of “expertise”. She claims to be an expert at jigsaw puzzles, an expert at hopscotch, an expert at baking and so on. She has indeed become really adept at all of these things and more over her industrious five years. Yet, as her mom, I am perpetually trying to nudge her towards a “growth mindset” rather than a static theory of expertise that she seems to have deduced or been conditioned into. Plenty of kids at school tend to say, I’m good at this, I’m great at this, and indeed, her best friend in class seems to be saying such things on a daily basis. Naturally, Sanaa would like to carve out her own place in the social order in kindergarten and has zeroed in on activities she has been having success with. Little does she realise or even remember that she has become an “expert” at these activities over time, rather than being innately gifted at them. I am sure natural aptitude has some role to play but I think it is only to the extent of determining what she gravitates towards rather than how well she does at it. The latter is a product, by and large, of practice.
For example, I have let her know that practice makes perfect. So if she wants to become an “expert” at her colouring, she must practice it everyday. Of course, this sometimes results in matter-of-fact remarks such as “daddy, when you were a kid, if you had practiced puzzles everyday, you would have been an expert like me” Without letting myself turn a blind eye to the snobbishness of that sentence, I am actually thrilled that she has begun to think that one can become an expert, if only they would practice.
We also encourage her to make as many mistakes as possible. Our mantra to her is — only when you make one hundred mistakes can you become an expert at anything. And it is a project, so we keep count. She is at 4, and I am at 6 mistakes so far…so according to this rule, I’m actually winning by having made more mistakes faster. I’m hoping that this builds in her the ‘fail fast and learn’ attitude. Also, this not only takes away the stigma associated with mistakes but instead replaces it with a glory. That can be a huge incentive for little kids to try new things.
This extends to my two-year old too. Samaa is a natural experimenter, who sometimes gets snubbed by her elder sister Sanaa for not doing something well enough or breaking apart her carefully developed masterpieces. Putting this in a growth framework not only is effective in channeling the frustration of the elder one but also allowing the little one to see that she is not yet where her sister is but she can get there with practice. Between siblings, I notice, it is important to not let the younger kid develop a sense of deficiency because they don’t yet understand the correlation between age and ability. In fact, isn’t it wonderful that they don’t understand age or its limitations at all?
Building the growth mindset through traveling
Of late, my husband and I like to find ways to embed this growth approach in travel-schooling our kids. We recently completed a seventeen-day adventure, driving across rural America between Toronto, Ontario and Vancouver, B.C. Driving across some of the most rural yet remarkably generous and beautiful communities in the US was truly rejuvenating. And oh boy, it was eye-opening and mind-stretching. Traveling constantly challenges kids to to adapt, and they get to see first hand how they are becoming better at some skills simply by traveling often. An example is becoming better at packing their own stuff. Both my daughters packed their own suitcases for the first time for this trip, and although they were stuffed with toys only, it is a start!
Yet, on a more serious note, simply being able to live out of a suitcase for several days, if not weeks stretches the brain in ways we didn’t stop to think about before. Kids had to create new games out of existing ones, they soon ran out of a dozen activities we had planned for them for the car, so the girls began inventing their own car games and pretend conversations. They were hilarious to say the least! Their current favourite is to enact out the conversation when we stop at a drive-through for a coffee. I’ve overheard everything from blueberry latte to Capucilli (they mean Cappuccino) and “Please no ham, Peppa is cute!” so far. I think you get the idea.
The best reason for teaching resilience instead of avoidance
Finally, there’s one more potent reason why we should encourage our kids to make as many mistakes as possible and applaud when they do. Truly, who can say whether something is an error or not? Most parents assume the role of a teacher who imparts information from a bygone era in the form of experience and opinions formed from a very specific life experience in the form of universal values to their kids. All such parents, including myself, do so with utmost love and genuine intentions. Yet, we are being presumptuous, and we are all guilty of it every once in a while. Of course, we would like to keep our precious ones out of harm’s way and that’s fine, it’s our job, isn’t it? Still, we forget that we are like outdated encyclopaedias… any information we have and any values we hold dear may be grossly out of context or even counterproductive in the world our children will come to inhabit. So, stop.
Isn’t it obvious that the children who come through us are souls who are wiser than ours? That is why they decided to come at a time when mankind is more evolved compared to when we were born. And they have chosen to experience a future that with our limited minds, we may only imagine. They are our gurus, they have come to help us grow and anything they learn from us is purely incidental. They will still learn more from their own mistakes than anything else. So, except for the wisdom which demonstrates itself as timeless and the pitfalls which may be irreversibly harmful, let us try not to keep them from their best learning experience.
Jumpstart
As my journey continues with small falls but big stretches every day, wishing all other well-meaning parents out there a fun time building a growth mindset in yourselves and your kids. I found reading the book “Your Fantastic Elastic Brain” with your kids a great way to jumpstart your journey!
Do share your own experience and tips about building a growth mindset in your kids. What were the funniest mistakes your kids made and what did they learn? What did you learn by letting them?
