Teaching GRIT.

by

Photo

I’ve yammered endlessly about my approach to parenting.

Practice what you long to preach.

I’ve harnessed its power for fitness, mindful eating, doing unto others, the importance of friendship etc.

I spare the child (most of) the lectures, choose to lead by silent example and hope it works.

Which bring, again, to our friend in the wheelchair and the vast amount of grit he possessed.

Each time we pass the Oakland outdoor exercise area I remark to the child:

Remember that guy? Damn that was impressive, huh?  He must have worked *hard* to do that!

And, each time I say the above, she seems to recall the whole visual a little less powerfully.

rsz_534216_10152107623514466_693857108_n1(1)

 her GRIT face!

So Ive tried to think about how I could lead by example.

I’ve wracked my brain for ways *I* have displayed GRIT that she & I could talk about.

Less than the fact I couldn’t come up with too many—the stories feel long-winded & rambling and I fear I’d lose my audience in the process.

Yet just as important as teaching her she already has not just roots but wings I feel strongly teaching her about GRIT will help her not only in her work-life but in relationships.

Perseverance and passion for long-term goals.

 rsz_1293054_10152168548589466_1041534627_o3Keeping this together demands GRIT.

(“A strong, hard worker?”)

  • I’ve tried making it an acronym so it’s broken down into words she knows.

(Guts, resolve, instinct, toughness.)

  • I’ve taken personality tests to determine if I even *have* the GRIT.

(According to this I’m GRITTY, but that hasn’t helped define/reflect it to her.)

None of those approaches have worked—so I’ve stepped back and tried to figure out *how* I could teach (on an 8 year old level) the importance and power of possessing grit.

Is GRIT taught through:

Letting her fall and fail?  To the child’s delight (not) I love the phrase: You win some, you learn some!  Each of my “failings” or times I’ve quit have helped me get to where I am today.  As a society we’re afraid to fail.  We are scared to let our children fail. Yes, failures can be embarrassing in the moment, but it’s by failing we either learn & change our approach or push through.  Which brings me to…

 

Letting her get stuck and teaching tenacity? GRIT, to this trash-mouth mama, is leaning anything worth getting or having is f*cking hard.  It’s also in the realization that this f*cking hardnessment (<—-technical term) is not necessarily a bad thing!  It lends *value* to what we’ve achieved. Which transitions to…

 

Letting her know hard work is the most important thing?   “I noticed how hard you worked.” not “You did really well! Great job.” In our house it is less important how well you do than how hard you try.  I don’t care if she’s the worst softball player on the team or the last in the class in math if she got there through working her a** off and GRIT.

rsz_1screen_shot_2014-09-13_at_90925_am

 

Yep.

That’s pretty much where this GRIT-Mama is stuck right now.

Realizing the importance of the trait and trying valiantly to convey/teach it in a way which resonates.

And you?

  • How would you teach GRIT to someone who’d never heard the word?
  • According to the quiz linked above are you GRITty?

POSTS BY EMAIL

Never miss a post. Enter your email to get my latest posts delivered to your inbox.

Comments

  1. I wish I’d done more to teach my child grit. In college she got too focused on perfection (although she was happy as a sold B student in high school) and gets really discouraged when the going gets hard,

  4. I think we are too afraid to fail and we are for sure showing our children that failure is bad as well.

  6. I guess I’m all about grit. My kids were raised with grit. To my family, it’s just a way of life.

    We’ve taken leaps of faith. We’ve made the unworkable work… the kids have learned that life is an uphill battle all the way, but on that mountain there are some beautiful places to stop, awesome sights from the peaks, and refreshing places to soak in.

    I think sometimes it’s difficult to picture or embrace this. My friends and family who’ve had less challenges in their lives say “how do you…?” “how did you make it through….” and “I could never….”

    They could. If they were simply determined.

    They say when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. I hate that saying. I like the one that adds “but if you don’t have water and sugar, your lemonade is gonna suck”. Mostly “grit” means thinking outside of the box. It means turning the lemons into batteries, or using them to clean your fingernails, or something else entirely. Or it can mean not settling for lemons at all. Saying “take back your damn lemons, I’m going out and getting me some APPLES.”

    We also have mottos for different stages… cues to remind us where we are. At times they may seem a little harsh (rough… gritty?) but to us they’re a kind of touchstone. When they were in middle school, the kids heard “pull on your big girl panties (or big boy pants)”. When they were in highschool it was “suck it up, buttercup” and now it’s “Welcome to adulthood.”

    My kids actually use those themselves now when describing their situations. The other day one of my daughters was talking about how difficult the management had become at her job, and how it was no longer a pleasant place to work. At which point she said “I know I have to suck it up, and this is part of adulthood”, and went on to outline her plan to retain her current job, make it better, get more hours, and improve her financial situation while looking for a new job.

    I was very proud of her.

    Having grit just means not quitting when the going gets tough. It’s knowing you need to get THROUGH to get TO. That there may be barriers, obstacles, and giant sinking mud holes between you and what you want out of life, and if you really REALLY want it, you have to deal with those things.

    Even in elementary school I used to illustrate this with the song from Sesame Street: Over, Under, Around and Through. http://youtu.be/VU5fgN3Cl3c It’s become kinda a theme song for me, even now.

  7. Wow. Your words on GRIT are hitting my spirit hard today, in a good way. Gonna let it marinate in my heart & mind for awhile to it can take root. I do feel I am already GRITTY to a certain degree, but I need more of it for the path my goals have me on. Thank you SO MUCH!!

  8. I’m sure you know it, but lots of studies show that encouraging and praising hard work lead to far better results than praising “smart” or other terms of the like. I think combined with the leading by example which you do so well, you’re doing a fantastic job. We can all take a page from your book!

  10. It is interesting – how we interpret, teach, use it. In some ways, the grit in my past worked against me as I stayed in things when I should have not & always stayed trying things too long when I should have not (more recent). 😉 I do think, though, that parents don’t let their kids work enough thru things these days. Without falling, we never learn the lesson or even how to get back up.

  11. Shared on my Facebook page. Had to pass along:
    You don’t get muscles like that without grit. You don’t get a blog following like yours without grit. She doesn’t know you have it, perhaps, because the parts of you that are cashing in on your grit daily are parts she doesn’t see (and maybe shouldn’t?). I’m thinking about when/how you work and make work fit so that she is #1.

    My boy is in gymnastics. His class is small; his teacher is demanding (but not unreasonably so)—and is teaching him to focus. Which I think is, in some ways, a “classier” word for grit. Relentless focus.

    So when he had to do bear crawls with his feet on a rope (on the floor) and kept falling and gave up, teacher told him that it was OK that he was falling, just try it again. As he gains more focus, more acceptance with not getting it right the first time, he’s starting to build a supply of grit.

    When you always get it right the first time, you got nothin’ when you finally fail.

    I think that just teaching focus—in the face of failure, in the face of distraction, in the face of success (keep working instead of quitting to celebrate)—will teach grit in the long haul.

  12. Such important stuff, and I struggle with how to teach it toy kids. I use the example of my running/training as hard work and success/failure but I feel it’s really hard to teach them how to fail at things. While I think it’s greant to let them struggle I find that learning how to deal with failing is tough. And tough for us parents too of course! Great post 🙂

  13. It’s so interesting to stop and think about how we teach certain characteristics to our children. I think there is definitely something to be said for letting kids fail and/or get stuck rather than swooping into rescue them (but it is so hard!!)
    My parents taught me grit without trying to- but they definitely modeled hard work and the satisfaction that it brought… whether it was their huge garden, or tackling whatever unpleasant chore needed to be done… I got the message that sometimes you just plow through and do it, even if you don’t really want to.

  15. I think GRIT is another one of those personality traits that we’re born with (although it certainly can be moulded by childhood experience). My three kids all fall at different points on the ‘grit spectrum’. I wish that one of them would develop a bit more and think that more ‘grit mentoring’ is probably what she needs…

    I bet Tornado is seeing a lot more of it from you than you think xo

  18. I try to teach my girls about grit….in all aspects of life but yes it is hard to watch them struggle even though there is great value in it. I make sure in my comments I say things that point out her hard work instead of natural talent, “You work so hard in school” in stead of “You’re so smart”.

  22. I don’t think you can teach GRIT.

    You can teach someone all the tools that are a part of grit but grit is the action in the unforseen “hard” circumstances and NO ONE can say how you will act in the face of that hard. That hard when priorities and yes values too are compromised!

    But as long as you teach the “inside” elements how to thrive it gets you pretty close to grit sometimes

  23. It’s also important to realize that “grit” can be situational. I’ve never had “grit” when it came to things like sports. I just disliked them as a kid and I still dislike them. I’m sure that a lot of school gym teachers, when asked, would say that I lacked grit. I’m equally sure that many math and science teachers would say that I had tons of grit and was impossible to distract when I became interested in something. In fact, grit has to be situational, because there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to master everything, even everything you might be interested in.

    And grit — stickiness — can be a bad thing, sometimes. I had a tremendous inability to let go of things I find fascinating; I’d call that just intrinsic motivation. (Ex.: I never studied math and science because adults liked it and complimented me on it, just because they were delicious for me.) But that same inability to let go has kept me in some bad situations that should have been abandoned as losses, long past the time when any normal person would have said, “Okay, chalk this one up to a learning experience and move on.” I may have said this in the past, but our greatest assets are often our greatest liabilities as well.

  24. Okay so first of all that 1st picture is AMAZING!!!
    And I love that you wrote this. I was just chatting with my Mom this past week, about the past year, life, etc. And to her I know it has been painful to watch some of the challenges I have gone through, but for me – I won’t change a thing. The challenge have changed me, given me perspective, and dare I say “GRIT”. And although it can be hard to see in the moment, those challenges are blessings in disguise.

  25. I love this. I have two kids…one is “grittier” than the other. And it makes the world of difference, but I have no idea why one is this way and not the other. I did see something that made me think of this over the weekend though. It was in an advertisement for Kahn Academy. The guy who started it said he tells his 5 year old son things like, “I know that problem was hard, its making your brain grow.” His son repeated it back to him saying something like…”that question was so hard, I could feel my brain growing!” My daughter struggles in school so I started to use that on her — I guess its the idea that though the failures you are not really failing, you are still learning, still growing. 🙂

  27. As a boy, it always made me proud to be referred to as ‘brave’. I make a point of doing it with my boys too. I was going to say that it’s something boys like to hear as it brings them closer to the heroes of their stories, but I can’t think of a real reason that wouldn’t apply to girls too. I sometimes think (though say less often) that my boys are ‘tough’.

    Anyhow, GRIT is the new BRAVE/TOUGH.

  28. Oh I adore those photos!

    I like the notion of letting people know you appreciate the time and effort and work that was involved – not necessarily *just* that they did a good job. Kind of reminds me of my grade 12 math class, in which I’m 99.9% sure that the teacher knew how hard I was trying and passed me based on that 😉

    For teaching grit – I think I’d wait until a moment when SHE demonstrates grit. And then say – “that’s grit.” And continue to do that, each time she demonstrates grit. I think that for kids especially, it’s easier to remember and understand when it’s related directly back to them.

  31. Here’s my mantra (shared with my former middle and high school students and now my students learning to be teachers): I don’t care how smart or good-looking you were born, you had nothing to do with that. What are you doing with what you’ve got?

    Know what happens 99% of the time I say/share that? Collective sigh and noticeable weight off shoulders movements (even the naturally good looking/smart ones).

  32. I scored 3.75 which means I’m grittier than 60% of the population – I sort of thought it would be higher but the fact that I have let a couple goals go lately probably affected it:)
    I’m with you on the idea that it is much better to always work hard than to be the best!!!

  33. Wow! That’s a hard one. I have 2 grown kids and I think they both have it but whether or not they learned it from me, I don’t know and something I want to ask them. One is a 25 year old Marine wjo has served in Afghanistan which I know was hard but harder still was landing in Japan 2 hours before the Tsunami hit and spending 8 months recovering bodies and helping with cleanup or my daughter who goes to college fulltime to become a teacher while working full time and carrying twins. Honestly, I think it’s them who may have taught me.

  36. i love the acronym you came up with! i think if she learns all of those, then she’ll have the ingredients to make one amazing, gritty cupcake 🙂
    yes i was forced to be survive and it made me gritty. i suppose i couldn’t have given up many times and just said screw this life, too hard. but i chose to persevere. my mom was tough, our life was tough. she is however, my favorite woman today.
    here’s the weird thing, Carla: i love who i am, LOVE where i’ve been, but feel i will not want my children to experience the pain i did. how silly is that? i want to protect them the way i wasn’t. i know it’s impossible, but there are some things i can do. it’s taken me 35 years to finally be okay with having kids, and now i am excited. but i swear to the world i will NEVER tell my child to walk to the store in the ghetto at 10:30PM to get food for us, when the store is miles away. never. 🙂

  39. I love the word GRIT. I also love your honesty and flowy-ness in this post! It hasn’t come across my mind to *teach* someone grit because we don’t have kids, and I don’t think pushing through pain in the gym and life grit are the same, so I’m not sure I’d say that I teach people grit at work, so I don’t have many thoughts for you. BUT I know looking back I see examples so clearly of my parents living with grit, and I might not have been able to articulate it at the time but now their examples are so strong in my life. So whatever you’re doing, I don’t doubt your daughter will pick it up in some way, shape or form!

    Took the test and I’m 4/5 on the grit scale – in the 80th-89th percentile of people who took the test. In some ways (life, trials, etc), I think that’s totally me, and in other ways (personal goal-setting, work) I don’t think I have much stick-to-it-ness.

Trackbacks

  4. […] old definitions of success.   That is my grit shining through.   As I was editing this post, my favorite mizfit, had a post about teaching grit.   I thought long and hard before I posted my comment that I […]

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This