An ongoing goal in our household is to get the kids to listen the first time. Let me rephrase that.  Listen and DO what is asked the first time.   I thought it was just me being crazy in this expectation but then I get our weekly letter from one of my kid’s teachers.  Part of the letter read, “We are working together, listening the FIRST TIME ASKED (for the most part), following directions and getting so much accomplished.”  So it’s not just me.  Wanting your kids to listen and do what is asked the first time is a legitimate expectation.  An expectation that I have been failing at!  My goodness, why can’t they listen the first time??  Whether it’s putting their socks away, putting their homework in their backpack, or brushing their teeth before bed, I feel like it goes in one ear and out the other.  Then, after they ignore what was asked the first time I sound like a broken record by saying, “What did I JUST say?”

So I really am trying to practice the traits of grit by learning from my mistakes on this issue but I am running on empty. If you have some great tips out there to help me make progress on this goal in my household I will be forever grateful!  In the meantime, here is a great article that reminds us as parents that in order to raise gritty kids we too need to work being grittier.

‘We Need to Be Gritty About Getting Our Kids Grittier’

Eleanor BarkhornSep 25 2013, 1:48 PM ET

Reuters

The word “grit” is ubiquitous in education today. It’s in the subtitle of New York Times contributing writer Paul Tough’s latest book, How Children Succeed. It’s one of the seven character traits (along with “zest,” “gratitude,” and others) that KIPP charter schools try to instill in their students. Tufts and DePaul University look for it when evaluating applicants. Like many buzzwords, “grit” doesn’t have a straightforward definition, but the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s description is a good place to start: “the habit of overcoming challenges, of learning from mistakes instead of being defeated by them.”

Today, the MacArthur Foundation announced that it’s awarding a “genius grant” to one of grit’s biggest champions: Angela Duckworth. An associate professor of psychology at University of Pennsylvania, Duckworth studies the personality traits that lead to success in the classroom and in life. According to MacArthur’s description of her work:

Duckworth’s work primarily examines two traits that she demonstrates predict success in life: grit—the tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward long-term goals—and self-control—the voluntary regulation of behavioral, emotional, and attentional impulses. A major difference between the two qualities is that grit equips individuals to pursue especially challenging aims over years and even decades, while self-control operates at a more micro timescale in the battle against what could be referred to as “hourly temptations.”

In her early work, Duckworth and colleagues devised empirical measures of grit and self-control in both children and adults and established their predictive validity for a number of dimensions of success. They found that these traits predict objectively measured success outcomes, even when controlling for cognitive ability.

Here’s a TED talk Duckworth gave earlier this year describing when she first realized the importance of grit, and what she sees as the next phase of grit studies: figuring out how to increase a person’s grittiness.

http://m.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/we-need-to-be-gritty-about-getting-our-kids-grittier/279992/

It’s time to confess.  Working to instill grit in our kids is hard.  Really hard.  It’s especially hard when it comes to fostering grit in my pre-pubescent   6^th grader.  I don’t know if your middle schoolers are the same but mine seems to have a nano-second’s worth of patience and gets upset at just about everything. 

So when I started Grit Moms, I wanted it to be a place where moms could talk about their experiences in teaching perseverance and that “I’m-not- gonna- give-up attitude” with their kids.  I wanted to share successes and the failures as well as validating that teaching grit takes time.  A LOT of time.  Grit talks a lot about failure and how experiencing it is not the end of something but the opportunity to try again and sometimes again (and sometimes again).  There are many fails I have experienced in my journey to teach grit to my kids and it has involved a lot of tears.  Some I may call epic fails.   Here’s a recent one.

My sixth grader was notorious last year for forgetting a piece of homework at school after we had gotten home.  So I often did a very non-grit act which was drive him back to school to get his missing homework.  Each time I would scream, “This is the last time I am driving you to school to get your work. Enough already. You need to be more responsible!  I’m getting really tired of this!”  Each experience involved yelling during car ride there and back of course which just became a mess.

As a new school year started recently we were doing great!  Homework was getting done; papers were coming home for me to sign.  And then it happened this week.  A test that was graded came home and needed to be signed.   That day, my son very casually said, “I have my test, but I am going to finish my other homework first.”  No problem.  So the afternoon was going fine.  Both kids were quietly doing homework while I was cleaning out their lunch boxes.  About a half hour later, I heard screeching sounds coming from my son’s room and the thrashing of binders and notebooks. 

“What on Earth is happening in here?” I said as I walked into his room.  He turned to me in tears and cried hysterically, “I thought I had my test in here but I looked all over my back pack and I can’t find it! It must still be in desk at school!”  When I say tears, I mean tears with the red face, the hands reaching for the hair on his head and pulling it.  Just madness.   First I thought, Ok, he’s going about this like a typical pre-pubescent kid right?  I mean he was upset the other day about something completely random in a similar way.

But then the continued self-loathing started, “Why did I do this again?  What is wrong with me?”  His words took so long to come out because he was seriously hyperventilating in between each word. At that moment I took a step back and said to myself, “What the heck is wrong here??”  This is what I have instilled in him?  Through my convoluted lens of grit, I have caused him to put this much stress and pressure on himself about what? A piece of paper??  Seriously? 

So once he calmed down and we set all the homework aside, we had a real talk.  A real dialogue about grit. Not about the need to be academically successful and the consequences involved for not doing everything well in school, but about focusing on our strengths, progressing one step at a time through things, about the type of person he wants to develop into, and how to have grit when things get difficult.  His crying episode just showed me that I all taught my child to do when things go wrong is to freak out, get frustrated and get upset before even starting to think about fixing it.  That it is if he is too traumatized to even thing about fixing the situation.  That’s not grit!  Those aren’t life skills that will enable my kids to succeed.  So I promised him I’ll do better and he in turn promised to do better.  

Here’s a great video from Good Morning America for parents reminding us to talk the talk and walk the walk when it comes to grit.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/kids-today-focused-winning-costs-24295414 

First day of school pics are everywhere!  It’s a new school year and here is a compilation of my favorite quotes that inspire grit.  I did my best to reference the authors in as many as I could. I hope they inspire you to be the best Grit Mom you can be to your kids.

“There is no elevator to success.  You have to take the stairs.”

“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in getting up every time we do.” Confucious

“Sometimes those who challenge you the most teach you the best.”

“Grit is the raw endurance, perseverance and passion that keep you going despite obstacles.”

“It isn’t what we say or think that defines us. But what we do.” Jane Austen

“Dream it. Wish it. Do it.”

“Grit – Sticking it out in the face of obstacles and setbacks.”

“Mistakes are proof you are trying.”

“Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill

“Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out and not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years.” Angela Duckworth

“No one likes to be frustrated to fail, but every child need to encounter failure  – to learn to step back, reassess and try again and again to develop grit.”  Thomas Hoerr and Walter McKenzie

“In order for children to believe in themselves, we must believe in them first.” Vicki Hoefle

“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice, and most all, love of what you are doing.” Pele

“Listen to the Mustn’t child, listen to the Don’ts.  Listen to the Shouldn’ts, the Impossibles, the Won’ts.  Listen to the Never Haves then listen to me.  Anything can happen child, Anything can be.” Shel Silverstein.

It’s been a busy weekend in our household as we prepare for another school year to begin (I know, can you believe it?).  The other day, I encountered a flurry of questions from kids in anticipation for the new school year.  A few stood out to me:

“What if my teacher doesn’t like me?

“What if I have to sit next to so –and –so and we keep talking and then get in trouble?”

“What if the math is too hard?”

At the same time, at few statements that I repeatedly found myself saying this summer stood out to me as well:

“Please don’t do that, you will fall.”

“Please give me that, you are going to spill it.”

“You can’t go to that with your friends, you will get hurt.”

Honestly, some of those phrases of mine are written in a bit more of a polite manner than I would like to admit, but you get what I mean.

To raise our kids to be gritty, they need to learn to not be afraid to take risks right?  I am talking taking healthy risks like trying something new and learning to do positive things independently.  This is different from unhealthy risks like texting while driving or engaging in deviant behavior.  One of the big things I have learned and continue to practice (while failing along the way of course) is to encourage and model healthy risk taking.  I can’t tell my kids to dream big and to expand their horizons but then turn around and stop them from trying anything new. 

A great article (see below) I just read reminded me of three simple qualities within my children – they are trustworthy, they are responsible and they are capable.  Repeat these to yourself as you start another exciting school year and make it a good one!

Want Your Kids to Think Big?? Teach Them To Take Risks!

From www.buildgreatminds.com

A few weeks ago, as my 5 year old rode his bike full speed down the street, I impulsively yelled out “Slow down….you’re going to fall!!” As soon as I said it, I knew I had made a mistake, one which I tried to be so mindful of in the past. Swiftly and without thinking, I was thwarting his ability to take risks in life.

Risk taking is vital for kids. Kalen Smith of Young Entrepreneur states that “the early years of someone’s life are a test for their propensity to become an entrepreneur.” But this isn’t the only reason kids should be taught to take risks. Risk Taking allows a person to carve out the life they want. Teaching kids that taking risks does not automatically lead to disaster is important, because:

• Learning and personal growth require taking risks
• Risk taking is a hallmark of exceptional leadership
• Willingness to take risks facilitates “thinking big”
• The occasional (but inevitable) failure that accompanies risk, builds character and emotional strength

It’s unfortunate how obsessed we’ve all become with “security.” I want my kids to have courage, to be bold in their dreams and have adventurous spirits. I need to showcase to them that you can’t play it safe when you really want something. Therefore, I must help my kids be fearless in life….which means allowing them to take risks.

One book that opened my eyes to how fearful Western Society has become is ‘The Continuum Concept’ by Jean Liedloff. Jean spent 2 years in the Amazon rain forest with a remote native tribe relatively untouched by the West. Amazingly, she found that very young children, were often left to walk around fast moving rivers, deep well holes and 4 year olds were even allowed to hold machetes. She noticed that the elders in the tribe did not panic when the kids were near these dangers and guess what? The kids did not get hurt.

In this tribe, all elders held a belief that the young child was “innately social, cooperative and had a strong self-preservation instinct.” They trusted that the child observed the elders, wanted to remain safe and would follow the behaviors of the group. They never held an expectation the child would fall, cut themselves or drown…and they didn’t.

We have evolved to take risks. Endorphins and adrenaline are released when taking risks. Neurobiologists believe that high amounts of endorphins gave humans a survival advantage, so that more people could transmit these genes to succeeding generations.  Risk taking is in our genes.

One of our goals is to help our kids expand their world. The process of learning, growing and stretching the bounds of who we are—has a built-in positive feedback loop. With each new discovery, each lesson learned, we become larger and more complete than we were before, and we gain confidence that we can continue to grow and learn. The process itself is like a self-esteem escalator, moving higher and faster all the time.  Children need to actively explore and discover the world around them and learn to take calculated risks.  The more they can do, the better they feel about themselves.

So I started listening carefully for phrases like these:

Be careful….you will fall Don’t do that….you’ll get hurt Watch out….you’ll cut yourself Don’t play with that….you will burn yourself Let me hold it….you’re going to spill it Get off that….you’ll kill yourself If you put your finger in there….you could die Climb down…. you will fall

These phrases, no doubt backed by fierce love for our young ones, still serve to covertly eat away at their desire to take risks. We pound it into kids that they can’t do something without a disaster ensuing and we inevitably create a reality they live into. Follow that up with a “I told you s0” or “You should have listened” and we have sealed their fate.

So, where does that leave us? Should we say nothing when we find our kids speeding on their bike or climbing to high for our comfort? No, but instead of adding the  negative outcome you envision, simply make the request you would like followed.   Meaning, instead of saying “Climb down…you will fall”, just say  “Climb down.”  Asking your child why you’ve made this request ,is a great way to generate introspection. This allows kids to become internally directed, which helps them learn to trust themselves and leads to good choices in life.

It’s important we see kids as:

1. Trustworthy. (When we trust a child, the child will trust themselves)
2. Responsible. (Children relish the opportunity to be seen as soon-to-be grown-ups)
3. Capable. (If we identify special abilities in children, they’ll feel capable of making good decisions for themselves)

So, now if my son is riding too fast on his bike, I consciously say “Slow down!!”  Encouraging experiences minus negative reinforcement, promotes a ‘mindful courage’, which is one of the most valuable skills I can teach him.

“Only a person who risks is free.” -Anonymous

– See more at: http://buildgreatminds.com/want-your-kids-to-think-big-teach-them-to-take-risks/#sthash.76q1xWKo.dpuf

There are so many great articles on teaching grit in the classroom.  Many of them provide tools that can apply outside of the classroom for parents as well.  This is a list of my some of my favorite suggestions from Vicki Davis who wrote an article on Edutopia called, “True Grit: The Best Measure of Success and How to Teach it.” http://www.edutopia.org/blog/true-grit-measure 

I found the suggestions presented on how to teach grit in the classroom have been great suggestions for me to teach grit to my kids (especially this summer since we are spending so much time together).  Here are some of Vicki Davis’ suggestions in her article and ways our household has embraced them this summer:

 Read books about grit

It’s all about summer reading right?  I start by defining what grit means so it makes the most sense to my kids. The current definition we collectively came up with is, “Not giving up on something.  Sticking with something for a long time until you are super good at it or reached the top.” I am sure their definition language will change over time but for now this makes the most sense.   With my younger one, we look for stories that promote grit and perseverance.  For my older one, I encourage him to take some time to tell me a little about the characters in in the books he’s reading.  I ask him, who are the gritty characters?  Why do you think that?  These discussions have made summer reading much more interactive for me and my older one especially since he prefers to read on his own nowadays.

Talk about grit 

The term “grit” has really grown to become a part of my kid’s vocabulary.  Sometimes we substitute it with, “A don’t give up attitude.”  We talk a lot about why grit is important.  We talk about how things (no matter what they are) are not always going to be easy to accomplish.  Whether it’s organizing your toys in your room, or learning a song on the guitar, certain things take work and it takes a positive attitude.

Share problems 

Sharing and talking about the problems you encounter on the road to accomplishing something makes the journey more doable.  Still my oldest grows so frustrated with certain tasks sometimes and is resistant to ask for help or express it.  In those moments, he so more likely to give up.  I work on telling him that he can share his frustrations and problems with me and I am not going to think less of him and I’m not going to take it all away from him and do it for him.  Instead we are going to talk through it and it’s up to him to ask for help/support.  Fostering grit is a dialogue. It’s not something we do to kids.  It’s something we do with kids.

Help kids develop a growth mindset 

Here’s a favorite quote I found recently, “Growth mindset teaches students that the brain is like a muscle and that with regular exercise, intelligence and capability will grow.  Students in this group learned not to be discouraged by frustration and early failure, and to stay the course and keep ‘exercising.’”  My daughter grew discouraged at one of her swimming lessons because she wasn’t able to finish swimming freestyle properly for a certain number of laps.  She had never done that many before.  Her instructor was great in that she commended her for doing what she able to do having never done that before.  My daughter approached the next lesson and those after that with more of a “growth mindset” as she worked one step closer to each time to completing the ultimate number of laps.  She has been positive and leaves each lesson saying she did the best she could and would work even harder next time.

Live grittly 

Strive to model grit qualities and characteristics for your kids in your everyday life.  Show them what hard work looks like and what it looks like to bounce back from a setback.   Even how we manage/juggle our day –to-day schedule of work and home takes grit.  Our actions; both verbal and nonverbal speak so loudly to our kids.  They know exactly what we think about grit through our actions.

Foster safe circumstances that encourage grit

Be sure to let kids know their hard work leads to something great!  Take time to celebrate your kids and their accomplishments.  Show them that their setbacks they may have encountered along the way eventually leads to something great!  When we celebrate accomplishments in our household, it creates a tremendous amount of hope in my kids for future endeavors.