Increasing Challenge-Seeking and Persistence in Young Children: A Curriculum for Families in an Informal Setting

Some children as young as four or five begin to exhibit patterns of helpless responses to challenge. Previous research suggests that how children respond to challenge may be influenced by their implicit beliefs about the nature of intelligence and talent, which, in turn, may be influenced by the type of feedback children receive from their parents. The current work sought to determine whether a whole-family curriculum implemented in an informal parent-child playgroup could help increase challenge-seeking and persistence among young children. Four- and five-year-old children participated in activities designed to teach them about how their brains learn and how to deal with failure. Parents received training on providing feedback aimed to promote incremental frameworks in their children. Field notes, parent questionnaires and interviews with parents indicate that children demonstrated increased acceptance of challenges and more mastery-oriented responses to failures. Therefore, educators may seek to enlist the participation of parents in order to increase mastery-oriented responses to challenge in young children.