Supporting Your Child’s Growth Mindset: A Guide for Parents of Struggling Students
As a parent, watching your child struggle in school can be challenging. You may notice frustration, a lack of confidence, or even a belief that they “just aren’t good” at certain subjects. These signs often stem from a fixed mindset, where your child might feel powerless or believe their abilities are set in stone. However, there’s hope. By fostering a growth mindset— the belief that effort and perseverance can lead to improvement—you can help your child turn challenges into opportunities. Here’s how, inspired by the principles of educators like Jackie Gerstein, Ed.D.
Understanding the Fixed vs. Growth Mindset
A fixed mindset can manifest as feelings of helplessness, where your child might say, “I’m not smart enough” or “I’ll never get this.” They may fear mistakes, worrying that errors define their intelligence. On the other hand, a growth mindset encourages empowerment. It’s the idea that with effort, your child can grow, learn, and succeed, even in difficult areas. This shift begins with recognizing and addressing those self-defeating thoughts.
Wondering how to help your struggling student thrive? Check this out!
Acknowledge Their Choices
Start by helping your child see they have control over their learning journey. Encourage them to reflect on their perceptions—perhaps they feel math is “too hard”—and guide them to choose a different perspective, like “I can improve with practice.” Celebrate small decisions they make, such as asking for help or trying a new study strategy, to reinforce their agency.
Identify and Reframe Negative Thoughts
Children often internalize negative self-talk, like “I’m not good at reading” or “I’ll fail anyway.” Work with your child to spot these “toxic” statements. Together, reframe them into growth-oriented ones: “I’m not good at reading yet, but I can get better with effort.” This metacognitive awareness helps them challenge limiting beliefs.
A growth mindset encourages empowerment.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
Model and Teach Growth Mindsets at Home
Show your child what a growth mindset looks like. Share stories of your own struggles—maybe a time you found a task tough but improved with practice—and how you overcame them. Directly teach them that all students, including them, can grow through personal effort. Praise their process (“I love how you kept trying!”) rather than just outcomes (“Great grade!”) to emphasize the value of hard work.
Empower Them with Personal Agency
Give your child opportunities to take charge of their learning. Let them choose a goal, like mastering five new vocabulary words, or decide how to approach a homework problem. Support them through struggles and failures, framing these as natural steps toward growth. This agency builds resilience and confidence, key for struggling learners.
Provide Performance-Based Feedback
Instead of focusing solely on grades, emphasize effort and progress. Offer feedback like, “I noticed how hard you worked on that essay—your ideas are getting clearer!” Encourage peer feedback during group activities or self-assessment with questions like, “What did you do well today?” This multi-angle feedback helps your child see their development beyond test scores.
Key takeaways
- Recognize Negative Thoughts: Help your child reframe self-defeating beliefs into growth-oriented ones.
- Praise Effort Over Results: Focus on their hard work to build confidence and resilience.
- Encourage Personal Choice: Let them set goals and learn from struggles to foster agency.
Building a Supportive Partnership
Partner with your child’s teachers to reinforce these strategies. Ask about classroom methods that promote growth mindsets and share your efforts at home. Consistency between school and home can create a powerful learning environment where your child feels supported to grow.
Why This Matters for Struggling Students
Children who struggle often face a cycle of discouragement. A growth mindset breaks this cycle by teaching them that challenges are part of learning. Research suggests that students with growth mindsets are more likely to persevere, seek help, and improve over time. By nurturing this mindset, you’re not just helping with schoolwork—you’re equipping your child with a lifelong skill to tackle any obstacle.
Take small steps today. Acknowledge your child’s efforts, reframe a negative thought together, or set a simple goal. With your support, they can transform their struggles into a path toward success.
Children who struggle often face a cycle of discouragement.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
The villain of learned helplessness threatens to trap your child in a cycle of academic despair, but your values of perseverance, empowerment, and love can triumph by embracing the Learning Success Growth Mindset Course. This transformative approach equips you to break the cycle and unlock your child’s potential. Take action now—enroll in the free growth mindset for parents course at https://learningsuccess.ai/course/growth-mindset/.
See what All Access gives your child
Is your child struggling in school?
Get your free personalized learning roadmap
You describe what you see at home. We turn it into a plan you start this week.
- Answer 5 short questionnaires about what you already notice, 30–45 minutes at your own kitchen table
- Your child sits no test and gets no score: nothing to schedule, nothing for them to dread
- You do the answering, the AI does the writing, and a person reviews it before it reaches you
- Access all 40+ courses instantly: reading, math, focus, processing and more, with new ones added regularly
Why we use AI, plainly: it writes from a knowledge base our team maintains and audits. We work through it line by line and pull anything the evidence stops supporting. The roadmap you get on Tuesday reflects what we corrected on Monday, and a human still reads it before you do.
Your school district must evaluate your child free of charge if you ask in writing, whatever your income and whatever the outcome (US, 34 CFR 300.111 and 300.301(b)). That route takes time and answers a different question than you do. This one starts today, from what you already know.
Your answers stay yours. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not hand identifiable assessment data to outside AI companies to train their models.
A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation too. That is the only route to those supports.
