Challenge Series: Resilience, Grit and Determination

In today’s forum we tackled the idea of Grit as proposed by Angela Duckworth in her book Grit. We began by exploring her introduction to the concept of grit through the following TED Talk:

We then explored how we might build commitment and resilience in our children through the following three prompts.

Parents discussed these three ideas and in general concluded with the following advice:

Chores are valuable for our children especially those that involve their own belongings, activities and areas of influence, jobs just as cleaning bedrooms, packing bags, washing their containers are all valuable jobs to support.  Other chores are also worth including in our children’s development that contribute to the family home, such as cleaning shoes, feeding the dog or taking out the rubbish.  Some parents suggested that incentives can also help, as well as doing the job together with the child to support skill building and spending time together.

Natural Consequences are good for children to experience and we should avoid protecting them from them, as long as they are low risk and do not have long term negative effects.  For example forgetting their library book, means that they cannot take home a library book today, so next time they will hopefully remember to pack it.  The natural consequence may be unpleasant in the short term, but has a significant impact in teaching a lesson for the future.

Problem Solving is valuable for children to navigate through and if they are finding it difficult to know what to do, then parents can offer suggestions or prompting questions to help guide the children to the solution.  If a child has tried all the logical steps and still finding no solution then the adult may offer to support or help

We also shared the following opportunities to support building grit at school through service, skill building and opportunities for commitment.

Skills

• A new ASA that is skill focused: rock climbing, beekeeping etc
• A new hobby or craft:
• https://www.masterclass.com/
• https://www.khanacademy.org/ 
• Language learning
• https://www.duolingo.com/
• Local Tutor: drumming, luganda, 

Service

• Action in the PYP 
• Service as Action in the MYP
• Service as part of the CAS section of the Diploma
• Service as part of the GCD
• Service as part of Duke of Edinburgh’s Award
• Contribution to the ISU Community: StuCo, ISSEA Ambassador, ASA volunteer, ISSAK volunteer

Commitment

• Informal Paid Jobs
• Looking after an animal or pet
• Looking after plants or a garden
• Looking after people (sibling, older family member)
• Being a member of sports team
• Being a member of a band or choir

We concluded the session with a reminder that commitment is more likely to be caught than taught.  We need to allow our children to see us showing commitment and catching us modelling commitment if we want them to do the same.  Keeping our promises, maintaining our commitments and taking care of our property are all opportunities for the children to learn from us.

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