You know what they say: If at first you don’t succeed, then try, try again. Perseverance is an important lifelong skill, and teaching it to kids will help them confidently approach challenges with a growth mindset.
In this article, we’ll explore what perseverance means and different ways to teach it to your child.
Key Takeaways
- Perseverance is the ability to stick to difficult tasks, using knowledge from each approach to try again. This practice makes a child more resilient to the challenges they will face over their lifetime.
- Learning perseverance as a child is important because it leads to better learning outcomes and more self-confidence. It also helps your child to achieve goals and strengthens their overall resilience.
- Perseverance can be developed by teaching problem-solving skills, rewarding the effort rather than the result, and instilling a growth mindset.
- Other things you can do to help build perseverance are modeling perseverance yourself, recognizing your child’s achievements, helping them with goal-setting, making perseverance fun, creating a supportive environment at home, teaching positive self-talk, and urging your child to lean into hard tasks.
Table of Contents
- What Is Perseverance?
- Why Perseverance for Kids Is Important
- 10 Tips to Help Kids Learn Perseverance
What Is Perseverance?
Perseverance is the ability to get back up, dust off those knees, and try again. It means sticking with something even if it’s difficult and trying new ways to problem solve.
We all know that learning new things can be hard and even frustrating at times. But if kids can focus and work through challenges as they come up, they’re more likely to meet their goals, whether social, personal, or academic.
Why Perseverance for Kids Is Important
Perseverance is a key skill for kids to learn because it benefits their future in a multitude of ways. Let’s take a look at how.
Better Learning Outcomes
When your child is learning something new, such as how to play an instrument or do a math problem, perseverance will help them build confidence and learn to problem solve.
More Resilience
If your child learns to persevere, they’ll be able to withstand, adapt to, and bounce back from challenging situations more quickly.
Higher Confidence
Once your child knows that they can keep trying new things when faced with a challenge, there will be no stopping them! Perseverance builds self-confidence as your child takes on bigger challenges and aims for bigger goals.
10 Tips to Help Kids Develop Perseverance
Need some ideas for how to teach your child to persevere? Here are some ways to build this important skill.
1) Hone Your Child’s Problem-Solving Skills
Instead of giving your child the answer to a problem, prompt them to think it through and come up with a solution themselves.
Ask them questions to guide them through the process, and encourage them to come up with several options. Challenge each one to help them analyze its merits.
2) Reward Your Child’s Effort Rather Than Results
If we want to encourage our kids to persevere, we should focus on their efforts instead of the outcomes. Even when their actions don’t get the desired result, we can say things like “I’m so proud of you for trying your best” and “That idea was worth testing out. I’m glad you did!”
3) Substitute Absolutes Like “Can’t” with “Can’t Yet”
One simple word can shift kids into a growth mindset: yet. For example, “I don’t know all my ABCs” feels very different from “I don’t know all my ABCs yet.”
Remind your kids that even though they can’t do something now, they may well be able to do it in the future.
4) Help Your Child Set Realistic Goals
Goal-setting is an important part of teaching perseverance to kids. Work with your child to set a goal they’re likely to achieve. Gradually work up to some stretch goals that are a bit harder to further challenge them.
5) Recognize Achievements No Matter the Size
Be sure to recognize even the smallest of your child’s achievements, as each success builds on the next. Giving heartfelt praise can do wonders for your child’s confidence.
6) Be a Great Role Model
Our kids notice how we face challenges in our lives. Show them how you’re sticking with something that takes time to master (crocheting a sweater or learning a new language, for example). It’s OK (and even beneficial) for them to see you get frustrated or want to give up—and then see you keep going.
7) Bring On the Challenges
Practice makes progress, especially when it comes to perseverance. While setting realistic goals is important, so is occasionally setting more challenging goals when your child is ready.
You can introduce one or two challenging activities each week to help your child hone their stick-to-it skills. For example, if your child has been successfully finishing simple puzzles, give them a puzzle that’s a bit more complex and might take longer to finish.
8) Teach Positive Self-Talk
Positive self-talk works wonders for meeting goals. Teach your child some mantras they can say, like “I can try my best” and “I believe in myself.”
9) Make It Fun!
When encouraging your child to persevere, consider making a game out of it. If they’re ready to give up on something, try a new, fun approach.
For example: “You can’t figure out how to put this dinosaur skeleton model together? Let’s put on your scientist hat and try again, thinking like a scientist!” Then give them a “scientist hat” to put on, or make one out of paper.
10) Create a Supportive Environment
Create the right environment at home to support your child’s efforts in learning perseverance. This might mean being open to hearing about your child’s challenges or hanging a sticker chart where they’re rewarded for their efforts.
Building Resilience with Begin
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Helping kids develop perseverance will benefit them now and in the future. So let’s Begin!
Frequently Asked Questions
1) How should I address my child’s setbacks?
Setbacks are opportunities to try again, to acknowledge and validate effort, and to support your child. It’s best not to react negatively to your child’s setbacks, but rather use them as teachable moments.
Empathise with their frustration and disappointment, and encourage them to figure out what went wrong and how they can adjust their approach for the next time around.
2) At what age should I teach perseverance to kids?
It’s important to encourage perseverance as early as possible, as your child is acquiring new skills every day and being able to work through challenges will be important to their success.
Many parents choose to nurture these skills in the preschool years (three to five years old) and then continue reinforcing them throughout their child’s school years.
3) What activities require perseverance?
Although reading and arithmetic certainly require perseverance, so do activities like playing an instrument, riding a bike, completing a puzzle, and playing tennis. It’s helpful to encourage perseverance in both academic and non-academic settings.
