9 Reasons to Embrace A Parenting Growth Mindset (And How!)

We all want our children to have a growth mindset. I agree with this 100%. But what about parents?

In this post, I outline why I think it’s just as important, if not more, for parents to have a growth mindset to benefit themselves AND their children.

First up, let’s understand the difference between fixed and growth mindsets.

What is a fixed mindset?

Broadly speaking, a fixed mindset is the belief that people are limited and can’t change or grow from who they are.

People who have a fixed mindset are likely to:

• Believe their traits, personality or intelligence won’t ever change
• Be highly resistant to seeing things differently or being flexible in their approach
• Be pessimistic about change and personal growth
• Feel resentful about the way things are but won’t question why or how they might be contributing to that
• Put little to no effort into changing things because they believe it won’t make a difference anyway
• Have a fear of failure, mistakes or criticism
• Blame others for certain situations
• Go into victim mode when they face pain or setbacks
• Struggle with challenges, problem solving or give up easily
• Often internalise shame and have low confidence

As a parent, you may sometimes have fixed mindset tendencies. Usually this comes from just wanting what’s best for your children.

You might find yourself projecting your limited beliefs into the future.

For example, if your child spits and bites when they’re angry, you may blow it out of proportion in your mind and believe they’ll never stop this behaviour.

Or another example may be that you’ve snapped at or hit your child during a tantrum and now you believe they’ll never recover from this traumatic moment.

Both of these examples are pessimistic views where there’s no option for change or growth.

So, what is a growth mindset?

Growth mindset is the opposite of a fixed mindset. It’s the belief that people always have the potential and capacity to learn and grow. 

Here are 9 incredible reasons to embrace a parenting growth mindset in your family.

Parents who have a growth mindset are likely to:

1. Believe that people’s paths aren’t fixed and there’s always the potential to change and improve.
2. Believe that hard work and effort leads to growth and success.
3. See mistakes as opportunities to learn or repair.
4. Have compassion towards themselves and their family members when things don’t go as expected.
5. Commit to trying again through problem solving and experimentation.
6. Focus on the process rather than on the outcome.
7. Be flexible in how they approach situations, people or problems.
8. Tolerate frustration and delay gratification.
9. Keep going if they can’t do something, because they just haven’t figured it out YET.

Why should you embody a parenting growth mindset?

Role modelling and normalising hardship

Children learn best through seeing and experiencing. They are far more likely to learn from what you do than what you say.

If you want your kids to have a growth mindset so they can tackle all of life’s challenges with hope, optimism and determination, they need to see what that looks like from YOU!

Children look for clues from their parents or caregivers about what’s normal and safe in life and what’s potentially harmful or dangerous.

As parents, we have a really important job to make clear what parts of life are normal and to be expected, even if those things don’t feel good, such as challenges or difficulties.

When kids see you dealing with challenges in a proactive and positive way, it helps them see that challenges aren’t something to be scared of.

It helps your children see and accept challenges as a normal part of life which everyone has to face. 

This is SO important because it helps children feel less alone or that something is wrong with them. Normalising difficulty removes the potential for shame (which stunts growth).

So whenever you show your child that:

1. You also struggle with difficult things 
2. You aren’t afraid of difficult things 
3. Difficult things can be overcome with time and effort
4. There are ways to cope and deal with difficult things 

…then those things stop being so difficult! Hardships just become a normal part of life.

Here’s an example of what a conversation using a parenting growth mindset might sound like in real life:

1. “Oh man, I had a really tough presentation at work today, I thought I’d never be able to get through it.”
2. “I knew it’d be hard, but I told myself to keep going. It was really important to me that I got it done.”
3. “I was pretty worried about how I’d do it, but I made sure I practised looooads first and I kept my notes with me.”
4. “One time I forgot what I was saying in front of everyone! Can you believe it? I felt so embarrassed. But then I took a breath, said sorry, and carried on. I got through it! I’m so proud of myself!”

Modelling how you deal with difficulty and normalising it is a game changer. 

It’ll help prevent your child from running away from hardship, giving up easily or believing there’s something wrong with them.

Mistakes are learning opportunities 

No human inventor in the history of humanity has ever created anything without making mistakes along the way.

Mistake making is the very marker of creativity, experimentation and innovation.

But for some reason, when children are young, adults think that correcting every mistake helps them learn. 

Let’s think about this example: 

A 14-month old toddler is playing with blocks and she struggles to get the shape into the right hole. She starts grunting with frustration and keeps slamming it into the wrong shaped hole.

How would you respond?

Many parents would simply see that their daughter is getting upset, so they’d help her out by putting the shape in the block, showing her the right way to do it.

Those parents’ intentions are perfectly good. 

But the unintended consequences of this rescuing act again and again over time as your child grows teaches them some very unhelpful things:

• It’s REALLY important to get things right.
• Mistakes should be avoided and it’s not worth trying.
• They are not capable of doing hard things themselves.
• Frustration is an emotion they shouldn’t feel.

The danger with this approach is that the expectations for life is set so high, it’s impossible for a child (or anyone!) to live this way. 

No one can always get things right. Everyone makes mistakes. No one can go through life only doing easy things. And everyone will feel frustration at some point.

So when we constantly keep correcting our children’s mistakes, try to stop them from getting upset, and do hard things for them, we are setting them up to fail in life.

Instead, when you teach and model to your child how to embrace mistakes, you help wire their brain towards resilience!

Being resilient means that when you find something hard, you have the strength and commitment to keep going anyway. 

You believe you’re capable of doing so yourself and you’re not afraid of the frustration you feel.

Growth mindset increases self-confidence and self-belief

Growth mindset naturally creates higher levels of self-confidence and self-belief within a person because there’s always the opportunity to grow.

There is no shame in making mistakes and therefore we don’t fall victim to believing we’re not good enough.

And this allows us to reach our potential.

Isn’t that we all want for our children?

How to instil a parenting growth mindset at home

All emotions are welcome

One of the main things that can kill a growth mindset is pushing down healthy emotions or attaching shame to them.

In the course of your child’s life, they’ll face countless struggles. A strong parenting growth mindset is prepared for this reality.

During any struggle, you’ll experience frustration. That frustration arises because there’s a time delay between the thing you’re doing and the outcome you want. 

In other words – we have to wait and that leads to feeling frustrated.

Now, when a child is frustrated, they might show that by lashing out violently or having a tantrum. 

They’re not behaving ‘badly’. Their behaviour is just a result of their emotional immaturity because they’re still learning how to develop coping skills for their big emotions. 

If we as parents can normalise our kids’ feelings by not punishing them or try to get rid of them, we help build their tolerance for frustration. 

Being able to tolerate frustration also has the added benefit of helping you to delay gratification (which just means being able to wait for the thing you want).

These are skills that can help anyone to get through life’s hardships and struggles without falling into pessimism or spiralling into shame.

So what can you do to normalise your children’s emotions?

• Show empathy and care by acknowledging their feelings as real and important
• Make yourself available for cuddles and connection
• Help show them healthy ways to cope, such as deep breathing, throwing soft toys at targets, squeezing their fists, using a fidget toy, etc.

Allowing your child’s mistakes to build their resilience

How can you show your child how to embrace mistakes?

Let’s go back to the example of the 14-month old toddler struggling to put the block in the right shaped hole.

You watch her bang the blocks. You hear her getting frustrated.

So, what should you do?

You give her time, space and you let her struggle. That’s it.

There’s no emergency, no danger she’s in that she needs rescuing from. She is just doing something tricky.

Here are a few potential outcomes:

1. Your toddler keeps trying until she gets the shape in the right hole. 
2. She keeps trying until she gets too frustrated and moves onto something else. 
3. She gives up and starts crying.

Only the third option needs your involvement.

You console your toddler, give her a cuddle and acknowledge that, yes, the shape game was hard. And you move onto something else. Or if she wants to try again, she can. Eventually, she’ll be able to do it, or maybe it’s just not happening today. And that’s totally okay!

The power of ‘yet’ as a path to growth

In this talk about developing a growth mindset, Professor Carol Dweck introduces the power of a simple word: yet.

‘Yet’ teaches your kids that just because they can’t do something once, doesn’t mean they’ll never be able to. It keeps the doors of potential open. 

‘Yet’ teaches optimism.🤗💛

Teaching children to say ‘I can’t do this… yet!’ when they face challenges boosts their confidence, uplifts how they see themselves and helps to nurture an optimistic mindset throughout their lives. 

The word ‘yet’ can help you frame yourself AND your children in a more positive light.

It encourages self-belief and confidence. This is the essence of a growth mindset which sees difficulties as opportunities.

Parenting growth through personal accountability

What if you’re the one who has made a mistake, for example, by shouting at your child in anger?

With a parenting growth mindset, you’ll see this as an opportunity to improve yourself. You can:

• Take steps to learn about your emotional triggers and how to cope better.
• Model to your child that you’re bettering yourself by learning how to control your temper.
• Apologise to your child to repair your relationship.
• Make du’a to Allah for forgiveness and guidance.

If you do all of these things, not only are you improving yourself, you’re also showing your child that one moment of poor judgement doesn’t define you or your relationships. 

The path towards personal growth and Allah’s mercy is always open.

Embrace the process and stop the praise

When your child is working on something that’s really tough and is trying their best, we want to recognise their efforts.

Crucially, avoid praise for the outcome your child has achieved, but rather focus on the process. 

For example, this may sound something like, “Wow, you’ve been working on that drawing for a long time. You’ve been putting in loads of effort! How did you decide on that colour, there?”

Ideally, avoid praise for your child if you can help it. Over time, hearing praise from parents can teach your child to look to you for validation and can potentially lead to people pleasing tendencies. 

We don’t want to teach our children to do something just to please others, but to do it because it’s what they enjoy, are passionate about, or is the right thing to do. 

Simply acknowledging their efforts and choices and showing our appreciation is often more than enough to help build our kids’ confidence and self-belief.

Reframing negatives into positives

Of course, in an ideal world, we and our children would ALWAYS have a growth mindset and think positively about ourselves and our circumstances.

In reality, our emotions will get the better of us and we’ll inevitably experience negative or limiting thoughts. That’s life and part of being human.

When you do find yourself thinking limiting beliefs, one way to turn things around so that you don’t stay stuck in negativity or a fixed mindset for too long is to reframe your thoughts.

Here are some examples of powerful reframes:

Negative thought	Positive reframe
I can’t believe I screamed at my son again, I completely lost my cool. I’m such a crappy mother.	Screaming at my son is against my values. I made a mistake and I can own up to it. It doesn’t make me a bad mother, it makes me human. I can apologise and try again.
I’m overweight and I’ll never be able to shift it. I’m so sick of my body.	I’m thankful for this body which sustains me and allows me to live my life. I will show my gratitude to my body by doing one good thing for myself everyday.
That colleague is impossible to work with. She is completely unhelpful and she’ll never change.	My colleague is still learning how to navigate the workplace. She hasn’t figured out our systems yet. She just needs time and support.

You can see how easy it is to fall into the trap of negativity, but making a proactive effort to find a positive reframing can make all the difference to your emotions and how you handle a situation.

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Conclusion

Taking on a parenting growth mindset can really improve your family’s lives, insha’Allah! 

When you embrace the idea that both you and your kids are capable of continuous growth and improvement, you create an environment of resilience, creativity, and self-belief in your home.

Role modelling a growth mindset shows your children how to face life’s challenges with optimism and determination. Normalise hardships and mistakes as part of the learning process, and watch how this empowers them to tackle difficulties head-on. Emphasise the journey over the destination, and focus on the effort rather than the outcome.

By welcoming all emotions and reframing negative thoughts, you can set a powerful example of how to handle life’s ups and downs without falling to bits!

And when you make mistakes, use them as opportunities for growth and connection, showing your children that personal development is a lifelong journey.

So, next time you face a parenting challenge, take a deep breath and remind yourself that you don’t need to be perfect. You just need to be willing to try, learn and grow.