Brave Parents Conversations #005: What do you do when your daughter calls herself “dumb”?

This is a great question and there are a few different ways to approach this one.

The first thing to do is to clarify what she means.

If she is “dumb”, then what does smart look like?

If that's too abstract for your daughter, ask her to give you an example of a person who is smart

and then get her to articulate

why she thinks they are smart. Get her of think about

what she would need to be, or do, to be what she considers smart.

It's likely that she may realize that she's already

what she's aspiring to be

or it may reveal something about her judgment and definition of what counts as smart.

Well, “not dumb”. So, for example,

she may have formed a view that if she is not perfect at everything,

she's dumb. Now, if it's an issue of perfectionism,

then you might want to spend some time on the steps to minimize perfectionism

that we just went through. Another thing

that might be going on here. Is

what renowned psychologist Carol Dweck calls a fixed mindset.

It's a belief that you're either dumb or smart.

You're good at sport. Not good at sport. Good at maths.

Not good at maths. There's no in-between. It's just very fixed.

There's no changing. Whatever you are,

You stay like that forever. And there is nothing to be done about it. The opposite is a fixed mindset,

according to Carol Dweck, is a growth mindset

and this is the idea that your brain is a muscle

and just like any other muscle, it gets stronger with practice

and this is based on the fairly recent understanding that our brains exhibit plasticity.

That is that they change and can change over time.

So this is a far more accurate way of looking at how the brain develops

and looking at our own development and capabilities.

Whatever your daughter thinks she's struggling with at the moment,

whatever it is that is making her think she's dumb can be improved with practice.

The research is really clear on this. A growth mindset is one of the biggest factors in people's

success. It’s a far greater predictor of achievement that IQ.

To be successful at anything in life,

working hard is usually way more important than being innately smart or innately,

you know, whatever, you know good at basketball,

So being smart is like being tall.

You may grow to be 5 feet tall or 7 feet tall,

but it's not something that you can choose or control.

If you are to become a basketball star

You are more likely to be tall, but you will not, and never, get picked for the team.

unless you try really hard.

So it's about the work that you put into shift,

from where you are to where you want to be.

So, whatever your daughter wants to improve,

encourage her to work and practice to improve it,

and then make that her success story.

So, the next time she says, she's dumb present her with the

evidence of how she was able to learn, improve

and succeed at something that she struggled with,

and how she can apply that process,

that recipe for success, to anything.

Something else to think about here is the power perspective, tell her that.

if she says, she's dumb, even if she's being dramatic or funny or flippant,

her brain will believe it and she'll feel bad.

And in the process to limit her potential.

She has a choice here. Does she want to say things or make her feel bad unlimited potential?

What does she want to say thing things that might make you feel good

and help her realize that potential.

So we're not talking about lying to herself or being delusional here.

It's about reframing “I'm dumb” into a statement that empowers her such

as I currently struggle with learning French,

but I'm going to practice more.

So I'll improve.

One last thing to think about is the way that

girls are socialized to be falsely modest,

you know, we're told that it's just

so unladylike to boast so girls and often grown women can do the opposite.

So we make ourselves small

and in the process we make ourselves week and we say things like “I'm actually really dumb.

My 100% test Mark, will that was a fluke?”

Or “I really suck at this.

I just got lucky or I should have failed, but the teacher felt sorry for me”.

We are socialized to talk this rubbish and as we just said on some level or our brains,

believe it, when we do say it.

So I would be encouraging your daughter to own her success and be proud of herself.

And you can model this by owning your success.

Tell her about something you really wanted

and you worked really hard to achieve and how you're proud of yourself.

You can also explain to your daughter that owning her success is not the same

as being boastful or conceited.

If she is beating all her friends on her tests at school.

She doesn't have to rub their faces in it.

She doesn't even have to talk about it if she doesn't want to,

but she can stop with the overcompensation of putting herself down.

Humility is not the same as self-deprecation

and there are going to be enough people in our daughters’ lives who are going to tell them

or imply that they are not enough.

So our girls need to push back against this.

Not agree with it.

We take a really hard line about self-deprecation with our girls.

If our girls say they're dumb or anything like that, we crack down on it.

We say we don't talk like that in our family.

Just as we teach our girls, they should never, under any circumstances,

be cruel and mean to someone else. We don't allow them to be cruel or mean to themselves.

We tell them, you are precious. You need to look after yourself.

And that means not choosing to hurt yourself with your own words.