The Pursuit of Tinkering

The Psychology Today Beautiful Minds blog has a great interview with Joshua Waitzkin, the child chess wiz depicted in the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. In the interview, Waitzkin offers some interesting advice to parents on raising resilient kids:

The moment we believe that success is determined by an ingrained level of ability as opposed to resilience and hard work, we will be brittle in the face of adversity. For that reason, it is incredibly important for parents to make their feedback process related as opposed to praising or criticizing talent. Think about it-if you tell a kid that she is a winner, which a lot of well-intentioned parents do, then she learns that her winning is because of something ingrained in her. But if we win because we are a winner, then when we lose it must make us a loser.

The interview goes on to cover Waitzkin’s thoughts on life-long learning. Definitely worth reading: Conversations on Creativity with Repeat Bloomer Joshua Waitzkin

Thanks to author Tim Ferris and his Twitter stream for pointing me to the interview.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 at 9:55 am and is filed under Kid Inventions/Innovation, Kid Reading and Writing, Play Time.