Developing grit in children for success in life

What is “grit” anyways? Essentially it boils down to perseverence, persistence, and the ability to be resilient over time. Developing grit in children is essential for their success in life. Grit came back into mainstream teaching vernacular around 2016, with Angela Duckworth’s book “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” and it’s a big buzzword in education right now. Essentially, Duckworth and her research team found that grit is an incredibly strong predictor of who would be successful. It wasn’t intelligence, preparedness, or access to resources that predicated success, but rather grit – the ability and willingness to stick with and persevere with a task – that is a predictor of success. Thankfully, being smarter isn’t necessary for success. Being mentally tougher is helpful!

This is, definitely, something that we want to try to cultivate in our children! But how we do this seems to be less clear. As Duckworth states, “We have to get gritty about getting our kids grittier.” Luckily enough, life usually gives us plenty of opportunities to practice and flex our grit muscles. And most of the time we do not need to do anything to find opportunities. Setbacks tend to find us in life! As parents, we just need to recognize the opportunities for our kiddos to flex their grit muscles and NOT intervene. That’s the tricky part! We need to not act. Most of us do not like that as much as we like to problem solve all our children’s problems. Letting our kids practice grit involves us stepping back and letting go.

You can find toolkits or masterclasses online where you can purchase a tool to “Teach Your Children Grit,” but in reality, I do not think any of those are necessary. Think back to where you learned grit. Likely it was not a classroom or a conference. It was life. Our children are the same. They do not need an experience or a podcast to learn grit. They need us to stop orchestrating life around them, to step back, and allow them to try things (and fail) for themselves.

How to Support Your Children in Developing Grit for Success if Life

Let them fail! – Let them wear sandals out on a snowy day and see what happens. Let them try an idea that you know will not work and see how they develop their perseverance and creativity. Let them practice resolving conflict with peers. Be there to observe without judgment and offer support and scaffolding if they ask, but let them clear their own way. Mostly, when your child comes to you with a problem, they do NOT need you to figure out how to solve it. They need you to sit with them and offer empathy. Just sitting with them in their darkness is enough.
Avoid “Bulldozer Parent” – We need to prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child. Their path is going to have bumps and mountains to climb. We do our children a disservice when we try to make it smooth and easy for them. Life is not smooth or easy for the majority of people, and learning to persist is something we have to start training them to do from a young age. They have a frustration about a grade they received. They need to talk to the teacher. They are upset about playing time on the field. They need to speak to their coach. They got into a fight with their best friend; they need to problem-solve and repair. These are the little moments of resilience that are developing.
Let them develop their “Grit Muscle” – We all know we have to work out our muscles to keep them strong. Think of grit as a muscle that needs repetitive practice to build strength. It starts when they are little with little failures and little exercises, and as they grow, so does their grit muscle. We have to provide opportunities for them to practice grit – well actually life provides opportunities, we just need to get out of the way!
Let them be bored – Bordem is a good thing. It allows room for creativity and imaginative play. It is the breeding ground for problem-solving and innovation. If your child says to you “I am bored, there is nothing to do.” Do nothing. They are not in danger. You do not need to entertain them and rescue them from their boredom. They will survive and be grittier as a result of their own initiative.
Model Grit – Life is messy mostly. Some parts are tidy, neat, and put together. In my experience, these moments are short-lived and often bookended by moments more resembling chaos. Learning to breathe, leaning into moments of discomfort, and talking openly about times in our own lives when we had to persevere are excellent ways to model grit. And modeling grit is one of the best ways that we can teach grit to our children.