If you want to raise successful, resilient kids, help them find activities they actually like, says psychologist Angela Duckworth.
Instead of forcing your children to try a specific sport or instrument, spend time exposing them to a variety of extracurriculars and take note of what they spend the most time thinking about, Duckworth said on an Oct. 13 episode of “The Mel Robbins Podcast.”
Guiding kids to activities they’re interested in can help them find their passions, hobbies and maybe even their future careers, said Duckworth, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania who researches mental and emotional “grit.”
“I think great parenting, a lot of it is noticing what your young people is thinking about,” Duckworth said, adding: “When we begin to notice where our mind lives, when we begin to notice what attracts our attention spontaneously, that is the beginning of discovering the interests that can make us something of a genius about what we do.”
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Kids who learn to stick with their interests, even on difficult days, can develop their confidence and resilience — two traits that can help them find success later in life, said Duckworth. Your child might pick a sport or hobby and then decide they don’t like it, but it’s important for them to finish that athletic season, or keep rehearsing that musical instrument just through their next concert, she added.
Duckworth referenced her own experience as a parent. Her child Lucy “hated doing homework and practicing her viola,” but when Duckworth looked at Lucy’s iPad, she noticed that “all of the tabs were open to baking videos,” she said. Duckworth also saw Lucy reading their family’s cookbooks, she noted.
Lucy ended up “volunteering in restaurants washing dishes, [then] was allowed to assist the pastry chef,” Duckworth tells CNBC Make It. “She was doing pastry literally every weekend and every summer all the way from 8th grade to, I guess, 12th grade … Her lifelong interest in food and cooking is still evident.”
Not every interest has to become a full-fledged career. If you just follow what you like to do, you might not necessarily make much money, bestselling author and New York University marketing professor Scott Galloway told CNBC Make It in 2019.
“Don’t follow your passion,” Galloway said. His advice instead: “Find out what you’re good at and then invest 10,000 hours in it — and become great at it.”
For Duckworth, interest is just one of four building blocks on the path to building grit, which her research shows is the most common characteristic among successful people in any field. The others include hard work, purpose and hope.
“Anybody who becomes great at what they do, there is a curiosity there, right? Their mind comes to this subject and wants to stay there,” Duckworth said. “When you start talking about something that you really care about, you’re a genius [on it], because that is where your mind lives.”
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