Angela Lee Duckworth on Grit
As indicated by my post last week on “Grit,” I think this is one of the most important and challenging elements of parenting. Important because if our kids don’t learn to persevere when things get really challenging, if they don’t learn resiliency in the face of set backs, and if they don’t learn that they’ve got more in them than they thought, it’s going to be really, really hard for them to flourish as adults. Why? Simply because life is full of setbacks, we all suffer low moments, and some of the most important situations we’ll be in – parenting, marriage, etc. – require us to give more than we’d imagined we had.
But it’s also really, really challenging to watch our children struggle and not want to jump in and help them. Sometimes my biggest challenge as my kids move through adolescence, in fact, seems to be navigating the border between being supportive and solving their problem. (And this is true not only of parenting, of course, but often of being a partner, sibling, friend, teacher, colleague, and more.) Part of this is empathy – we don’t like seeing those we love suffer. But part of it also, I think, might also be laziness. I mean, it’s just so much easier to do it myself. But when I do, whether in the name of efficiency in a too-crazy life or because of a genuine empathy for what my kids are facing, I rob them of the chance to struggle and, thereby, to grow into the kinds of adults the world needs and God wants to provide the world through them.
For this reason, I find Angela Lee Duckworth’s work fascinating. I told you a little bit of her story and research last week. In this her 6-minute TED Talk, we have a chance to learn a little bit more about what she has discovered about grit, that ability to forge through present struggles in pursuit of a worthwhile future. Once a business consultant, then a math teacher, and now a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, Duckworth labors to measure that important but in many ways intangible quality she calls grit. I continue to learn a lot about not just parenting but also leadership and life from Professor Duckworth, and I hope you do, too.
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Thank you David- for following this train of thought on the topic of grit. I am in the midst of reading the book on “grit” that you mentioned last week “How Children Succeed” and I am enjoying it. I really do think it is an important topic and such a potentially great way to reconnect people to the benefits of their faith in Christ. Jesus’ call to “take up the cross” was a call to be gritty.
It strikes me that Jesus’ parable about the persistent widow, the gospel reading for this coming Sunday, is about grit. It’s also a challenge to us. How much grit do we have? Being the church in this time certainly has its challenges, and sometimes it’s hard to not feel worn down by them. But as Luke indicates in v. 1. the parable is also about our need, and how we may find strength and stamina in prayer.