I'm such an egghead.

One very common thing is that often very brilliant children stop working because they're praised so often that it's what they want to live as - brilliant - not as someone who ever makes mistakes. It really stunts their motivation.

You can't just declare that you have a growth mindset. Growth mindset is hard.

As the growth mindset has become more popular and taken hold, we are beginning to find that there are pitfalls. Many educators misunderstand or misapply the concepts.

My undergraduates, at first, get all starry-eyed about the idea of finding their passion, but over time, they get far more excited about developing their passion and seeing it through. They come to understand that that's how they and their futures will be shaped and how they will ultimately make their contributions.

When I was in graduate school, I became very interested in why some kids took on challenges and were able to bounce back from setbacks whereas others shy away from difficulty and really crumble when they hit failures. I became fascinated with people who had that kind of courage to take on challenges.

The mindset ideas were developed as a counter to the self-esteem movement of blanketing everyone with praise, whether deserved or not.

With a growth mindset, kids don't necessarily think that there's no such thing as talent or that everyone is the same, but they believe everyone can develop their abilities through hard work, strategies, and lots of help and mentoring from others.

I've always been interested, since graduate school, in why some children wilt and shrink back from challenges and give up in the face of obstacles, while others avidly seek challenges and become even more invested in the face of obstacles. So this has been my primary question for over 40 years.

Think about being a teenager and feeling like school is just about taking tests you may or may not be interested in, after which someone will judge whether or not you're smart. No one's going to be inspired by that.