Growth Mindset Is Not a Belief, It’s a System

What Most People Get Wrong Bout Growth Mindset

Let’s start with the basics: growth mindset is the belief that abilities, like intelligence, skills, and performance aren’t fixed. They can be developed through practice, feedback, and effort over time (Dweck, 2006). It stands in contrast to fixed mindset, which assumes you’re either good at something or not, and that trying harder wont change much.

Growth mindset is about learning from mistakes, taking risks, and understanding that failure is part of how we grow. But that doesn’t happen just because we tell kids to try again. It happens because we’ve built an environment where trying again feels emotionally safe.

You’ve heard: “Praise effort, not intelligence,” or “Just tell them to try again…” It sounds easy, but it isn’t.  

Because what we call “growth mindset” isn’t just a belief. It’s not a poster in a classroom or a pep talk. It’s not praise for effort or even celebrating small wins. And it’s definitely not about pushing kids harder to prove they can do hard things.

True growth mindset is a nervous system experience. It’s what happens in your child’s body when they fail, freeze, or fall behind, and how safe they feel to try again. And that experience starts at home.

Reframing the Perspective Through Research

A six year longitudinal study by Seo et al. (2025) followed middle and high school students across South Korea. It found that when students perceived their teachers using growth mindset strategies: normalizing mistakes, praising effort with feedback, creating space for struggle – they showed significant gains in both academic interest and performance one year later. 

But there was a catch: it only worked when classrooms felt emotionally safe. When students felt shamed, micromanaged, or unsupported, growth mindset strategies fell flat.

 That’s the part most schools and parenting guides miss.

Growth mindset isn’t just a motivational tool. It’s a system. And safety is its foundation.

Growth Mindset Starts Before the Struggle

After reading the aforementioned study, I wondered to myself, what happens if a children doesn’t have a school or teacher who practices growth mindset or have a supportive classroom that scaffolds learning? What can parents do? How can parents help develop their child’s growth mindset regardless of their child’s school or classroom environment that is out of their control?

Long before your child is asked to persist on a math test or bounce back from a missed goal, they’ve already internalized what happens in your house when things go wrong.

-          Do you rush in to fix?

-          Do you shame or scold?

-          Do you overpraise or deflect?

-          Do you pause, co-regulate, and help them find their next move?

 I hope you didn’t just flinch at the thought.

These are the habits that create the actual mindset, not the words. And they start forming early.

Russian psychologist, Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD, 1978), teaches us that children grow most when they’re supported just beyond their current skill level. But that support must be attuned to their emotional state. Without emotional regulation, the brain can’t access the prefrontal cortex needed for problem solving. That’s where co-regulation comes in.

What Parents Get Wrong (With Good Intentions)

We all want to support our kids. But sometimes our help has the opposite effect:

-          Overpraising effort without connecting it to strategy can create fragile self work because they tie our love to completion and success (Mueller & Dweck, 1998)

-          Fixing too quickly robs them of the learning process and reinforces helplessness and a feeling that we too do not believe they are capable

-          Cheering too hard when they get it right can make failure feel like disconnection, creating a fear of not only failing, but of trying when it seems too difficult

The goal isn’t high self-esteem. It’s self-efficacy: the belief that “I can figure things out, when it’s hard.”

Reframing “Laziness” and “Giving Up”

What looks like quitting is often a nervous system response.  

When your child is faced with something too hard, too fast, or too unsupported, their body doesn’t say “This is challenging. Let me engage with curiosity.”

It says: DANGER (loudly)

Fight. Flight. Freeze. Fold.

Take my son for example. He played up a level in soccer this past spring. His original team had an age range of 4-6 year old’s, but when we got to the first game, the kids were all 4, and my son had just turned 7. He was going to dominate these kids in an unfair way. We all wanted him to have a little challenge. His new team was supposed to be 7-9 year old’s, and of course, they were all 9 years old, super advanced, and we looked at each other and knew he was “out of his league” on this team. But my husband and I hoped it would be inspiring to him to see kids doing cool things in soccer, and he would go out there showing them what he could do, and rise to the challenge. Well… from the outside, it looked like he stopped trying. He would stand around in practice, give less than minimal effort, and come game time, he was happy to sit on the sidelines. But inside, his nervous system was frozen. He didn’t feel safe to participate because the gap felt too bit. There was no bridge.

 He wasn’t unmotivated. He was unanchored. And sadly, we didn’t realize it till the end of the season. I’m not making excuses for him – he is a boy who plays hard and equally needs and will demand his rest. When he’s not feeling something, he’s really not feeling it. But this was different.

 This is where parents must recognize: motivation is contextual. It depends on how safe, supported, and capable the environment makes your child feel.

The Real Work: Scaffolding and Co-Regulation in Real Time

Motivation can’t be built with words alone. It’s build in these moments:

-          When your child is frustrated and you let them sit with it just a bit longer than usual

-          When you don’t solve the puzzle but offer, “want to talk through it together?”

-          When you adjust the challenge to match their stress, their sensory load, or emotional bandwidth (that’s not being soft, that’s being attuned)

-          When you let them struggle without sinking, because you’re right there with them

This is what Vygotsky meant. This is what Dweck meant. This is what kids need more than stickers, slogans, or posters.

The Parent’s Role: No Matter What School Does

Whether your child’s teacher models growth mindset or not is not the deciding factor.  

You are.

Because the tone of your voice, the space you make for failure, the way you regulate your own reactions is what wires your child to try, fail, recover, and persist.

That is what tells them: “Trying again is safe. You are still connected.”

Now I’m flinching… I have work to do in this area. 

What To Do Next:

1.      Audit your reactions to your child’s mistakes. Do they feel like safe places to land or high-stakes moments?

2.      Shift praise to strategy: instead of “You worked so hard!” try, “You kept adjusting until it clicked. That’s the kind of thinking that builds skill.”

3.      Build in recovery: Motivation doesn’t just come from trying, it comes from rest. The brain builds neural connections for memory, skill building, and aptitude after the work. So make sure there is ample time for play, sleep, and downtime. I cannot stress the importance of sleep enough, if for no other reason than it helps our brain develop or strengthen our ability to learn and sharpen our skills.

4.      Watch your own nervous system because you can’t co-regulate if you’re activated. Your tone, posture, and breath matter more than your words. Finding your own regulation strategies in moments of low pressure so you have the ability to practice, giving your body and brain the ability to get reps in helps your body and brain know what to do when big triggers hit. Going back to your nervous system for a minute – when you are activated and triggered, your rational brain goes offline as a protection. Trying to remember that regulation tip or script you learned on TikTok isn’t going to come back to you in those moments. But practicing when the stakes are low, those small annoyances gives your body the ability to correlate a feeling with a regulation strategy so that over time it becomes second nature.

5.      Support effort with strategy by teaching your child to reflect: what worked? What didn’t? What’s one thing to try differently next time?

6.      Book a session if your child is shutting down, giving up, or resisting anything hard. This is where real change starts.

References:

Baumeister, R. F., Campbell, J. D., Krueger, J. I., & Vohs, K. D. (2003). Does high self-esteem cause better performance, interpersonal success, happiness, or healthier lifestyles? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4(1), 1-44.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "what" and "why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227-268.

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.

Gunderson, E. A., Ramirez, G., Levine, S. C., & Beilock, S. L. (2013). The role of parents and teachers in the development of gender-related math attitudes. Sex Roles, 68, 153–166.

Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 33.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

Seo, Y., Lee, M., & Lee, S. (2025). Growth Mindset in Action: Teaching Practices That Fuel Student Interest and Academic Success. Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Siegel, D. J. (2012). The whole-brain child: 12 revolutionary strategies to nurture your child's developing mind. Bantam.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.