How to Use the Power of Stories to Help Your Kids Develop a Growth Mindset
As a kid, everything in my life was about basketball. I ultimately got into sports marketing and helped to organize both professional and Olympic games.
But in 2016, I had a life-changing anxiety attack. The issues left over from childhood experiences had bubbled over.
A friend showed me various techniques all aimed at healing the subconscious. One of the techniques that worked the best was EFT tapping, an evidence-based practice where you gently tap various points on the body with your fingers in order to relieve pain and emotional distress.
Through my own healing, I dove into a whole new world of psychology and therapy and decided to help others with what I had found.
I started working with high performers like business leaders and professional athletes to offer similar transformational results.
My children, who were 9 and 11 at the time, really wanted to understand the secrets of these high performers.
My kids were fascinated by my high-performance research
In 2019, I realized that I wanted to have a deeper understanding of the techniques I was using. I decided to do a master's program in psychology.
For my thesis, I researched what makes extremely successful people different from the average population. Was it their daily habits? Their routines? Their grit?
I interviewed CEOs, presidents and founders of multi-billion-dollar companies.
I found five commonalities among these high performers:
- They had a growth mindset — the belief that they could further develop themselves through a combination of hard work, taking risks, and constructive feedback.
- Many of them had transformed childhood difficulties into driving forces.
- They possessed high levels of self-awareness.
- They did not consider failure as a setback, but rather a challenge that needed to be solved.
- Despite being among the elite, they were humble and treated their success almost as if it was just some other piece of factual information.
But something struck me as even more interesting than my findings. My children, who were 9 and 11 at the time, really wanted to understand the secrets of these high performers.
I would present all of these different options and decisions throughout the person’s life and show my children that this person had a growth mindset, and that’s how they got to where they are today.
The unique method I used for teaching growth mindset to my kids
In the evenings during my master’s work, I shared the lives of my interviewees with my children.
But I didn’t just tell stories in a basic way. (That would’ve put my kids in a passive role.)
Instead, I wove these interviews into adhoc, choose-your-own-adventure stories.
I told them, “Once upon a time there was a little girl who was born in the seventies in North Carolina, and because of where and when she was born, she had to stay in the kitchen and she had to serve others. She had an alcoholic father and that made her family’s life so complicated. But she had big dreams. This girl had a choice. Either she would just accept what everyone told her or she would choose her own destiny. What do you think she would choose?” And they would say her own path.
I would present all of these different options and decisions throughout the person’s life and show my children that this person had a growth mindset, and that’s how they got to where they are today.
This also revealed how having a growth mindset was the real key to high performance. It was about leading your life — not cruelly pushing yourself.
Transforming kids’ mental health
When Covid hit and I saw how difficult the isolation was for children, I decided to pivot my practice toward working with families.
As a therapist, I know the consequences of the traditional system, where kids are struggling or already experiencing burnout.
I see kids who — by the age of 13 or 14 — have stomach ulcers and anxiety because of school. Or they have so much homework that they have to quit sports or other things they love.
I’m really big on fulfillment. Each family has to find what works for them. Traditional schools do work well for many kids. But in alternative schools, they’re more likely to try to discover what the kid is passionate about. It’s not just about achieving results. I encourage families to find ways to enable self-led learning and true passion in their children's lives. And to take the pressure off.
Turning my research into an adventure book
I turned my master’s research into an adventure fiction book that helps kids see the real effects of having a growth mindset. In the book, the fictional characters meet real life people, who defied the odds and have achieved something extraordinary in their lives.
I launched a Kickstarer campaign, which more than doubled its initial funding goal.
Aimed at middle-grade readers, the book hopes to inspire children to rise from adversity, overcome obstacles, step into their truth, and reach their goals with integrity.
Our lives are made up of a lot of different decisions. This is exactly why it’s so important to put our children in the driver’s seat.
Editor’s note: You can learn more about Nora’s book on her website. We feature stories by unique thought leaders in education and child development. Does that sound like you? Submit an idea to content@synthesis.is.
All posts
Synthesis Tutor is built on research by DARPA—the government agency behind GPS, the Internet, and early self-driving cars.
DARPA sought to create a digital learning system as good as the classroom, but they accidentally made something far better. In fact, their average student performed better than 99.99% of students who learned in a classroom.
But the DARPA students didn’t only outperform the classroom, they also outperformed 99.9% of Navy technicians with an average of ten years of experience. This shows us that there is a way to teach concepts—even advanced concepts—in a way that’s far more efficient and empowering.
To achieve those results, the DARPA team created software that mimicked the way experts tutored their students. Unlike human tutors, software never gets tired, frustrated, or impatient. It never has an off-day or fumbles an explanation. If a student misunderstands a concept, the digital tutor always provides just the right guidance. This, it turns out, is critical.
Most importantly, the students felt like they were learning from a real person. The tutor was digital, but it had soul. Its care, intentionality, encouragement, and patients built unbreakable trust with students. They relied upon the digital tutor, shared their struggles, and treated it like you’d treat your favorite teacher. It’s hard to believe, but the digital tutor created a bond with the students—a bond that acted like fuel for unimaginably deep, fast, and joyful learning.
To test its effectiveness, DARPA set up a competition between three groups:
- Navy technicians with an average of 10 years of experience
- Students who learned in a classroom for 36 weeks
- Students who learned with the DARPA digital tutor for 16 weeks
The DARPA students outperformed both groups by huge margins. In only 16 weeks, they were better than 99.9% of Navy technicians and 99.99% of classroom students.
No other way of learning has ever achieved anything close to these results.
If you want to get close to the DARPA results, you’ll need to hire a world-class tutor to work with your child one-on-one. But even then, research shows those students won’t perform as well as the DARPA program.
Simply put, the DARPA program is the greatest way to learn in the history of humanity. It’s a big statement—we know. But it’s inexpensive to try it and to quickly discover this for yourself.
Synthesis partnered with the team that created the original DARPA program. We expanded upon their research, tailor-made a platform for kids ages 7-10, and extended what they achieved with modern AI tools.
For the first time, any kid with an internet connection can receive the best education in the world—no matter where they are.
If you’d like to dig deeper, you can read this study conducted by the Institute for Defense Analysis.
Or check out this helpful summary of the results.