Help! My child doesn't have grit.

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How do I help him persevere when he faces a setback? Why does my child quit when faced with a mild challenge? How do I help her try again when things don’t go her way?

Rarely does a week go by when I am not asked some version of these questions. Parents of toddlers to young adults -- and every age in between -- have approached me, concerned with what they see as a lack of focus and determination in their offspring. Even the famed researcher on grit, Angela Duckworth (she literally wrote the book on it – Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance), has faced these moments of questioning. She recounts one instance, observing her four-year-old struggle to open a box of raisins then giving up and walking away. “I was watching from another room, and I nearly gasped. Oh god, my daughter has been defeated by a box of raisins! What are the odds she’ll grow up to have any grit?”

Did I mention Duckworth is also a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship?

You see, you are not alone. Even geniuses struggle over how to help nurture grit in their children.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing about several aspects of grit and how each may inform our parenting and enable us to nurture a sense of passion and perseverance in our children.

But first, why do we want to nurture grit in our kids?

Angela Duckworth defines grit as passion and perseverance in pursuit of a long-term goal. Her work is based on years of research following high achieving individuals as diverse as Scripps National Spelling Bee finalists and West Point cadets to NFL football players and young teachers in disadvantaged school districts. She even followed people who sold time-shares. And what predicted success for all these individuals?

Having grit. The ability to hold unswervingly to a long-term goal no matter how difficult or challenging.

And the interesting thing about grit is that it isn’t correlated with IQ or talent.

For decades, West Point administrators sought to predict who would drop out in the first few challenging months of initiation, referred to as “Beast Barracks.” Their measure of aptitude, which included achievement test scores, school rank, leadership qualities, and physical fitness predicted academic success at West Point, but had no relation to who stuck it out in those first few months and who quit. But Duckworth’s measure of grit, which assessed the degree to which each cadet had both perseverance and a singularly focused passion, predicted who stayed the course.

Why should I care that grit is not related to IQ or talent?

As one who has devoted her work to examining the interplay of Nature and Nurture, this distinction is important. We are all born with a DNA blueprint (Nature) for our height, hair color, body type, temperament, and cognitive capacity; but our environment, experiences, and relationships (Nurture) often determine how those genetic markers manifest themselves. There is always an interplay of Nature and Nurture. The reason we should be glad that grit is not related to IQ or talent is that it illustrates the value and strength of practice, hard work, and effort.

We rarely see the mistakes, the work, and the effortful practice that determine one’s success. Think of Taylor Swift. She wrote hundreds of songs in her early days, yet only a handful of them resulted in record hits. Consider elite swimmers, who log hours upon hours in the pool, repeating and perfecting the same stroke or movement time and time again. Sociologist Dan Chambliss refers to this as “The Mundanity of Excellence.” Think about an amazing 20-minute Ted Talk you viewed. Can you calculate the hours, weeks, and months that ultimately created that beautifully crafted talk? The performances we see hide the work that it took to get there. And so it’s best we chock it up to talent. Otherwise, it’s only our laziness and lack of grit that separates us from those who are truly great. Or, as Jerry Useem in The Atlantic put it, “There but for the grace of grit go I.”

Grit seems pretty complex. Can’t I just tell my kids to buck up?

That is certainly one strategy. The message that you believe in your child and have confidence they can do something is a strong and supportive alternative to simply “bucking up.” But to really get at the complexity of grit and how it develops, let’s look at the key features that make it up and ask whether those are areas where our children have opportunities to grow.

One key element of grit — the ability to sustain focus on a particular goal over a long period of time — requires time to develop. You may be familiar with the “10,000 Hour Rule,” popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers, that suggests that experts in music, sports, computer science, and other arenas logged a minimum of 10,000 hours of practice in their journey to excellence. This would equate to about 10 years of sustained practice in order to become an expert. Grit takes time. Our kids are just beginning this journey.

So let’s look at the building blocks of grit. Duckworth identifies four psychological traits that comprise grit. These are:

  1. Interest or passion
  2. Capacity to do deliberate practice
  3. Sense of purpose
  4. Hope

In the coming weeks, I’ll tackle how we nurture these traits in our children through our parenting style and through the environment we create. I’ll also examine the darker side of grit and how emotional development and the value of quitting can influence our view of grit.

Links to the series on Grit:

What's your grit level? You can find Duckworth’s grit test here.

Want to learn more about parenting for grit? Join one of my parenting groups set to begin this spring!