Motherhood in this moment: Channeling Carol Dweck

Grace has recently joined the track team. It's added a lot to her schedule. 2 hours of practice everyday after school. I was worried she'd be taking on too much. It has been a lot. The first thing we tackled was getting enough food (and the right kind) to fuel her through school, two hours of track and two hours of karate.

Then we worked on gear and keeping that gear clean, packed and ready. Being organized enough to go straight from school to track and track to karate, with all the clothes, shoes, snacks and equipment you need for each sport would be a lot for me, and I'm a grown up. She's 14. But she's doing great. She's keeping everything together and packing a "track lunch" to eat after school.

In addition to starting track, karate has ramped back up. The girls were ready to do demo team again this year. That means we are back to all the extra practices and training that go with being on demo.

They started doing tumbling with a coach at karate. The hope is the with extra tumbling practice the kinds can get better at the ariel kicks and tricks. It's optional, but of course my girls wanted to do it. So on top of everything else they go to an extra tumbling practice every week.

Sigh. All of this violates my long standing rule of 1 extra thing per kid. It's been a lot for all of us but we are managing. More and more I'm glad we took last year off from demo. I'm just not convinced that this pace makes sense for any of us, but it does provide a lot of teaching moments.

Case in point- Grace has come home from karate crying every night for two weeks.

"Hug her please," Chad mouthed to me as they walked in the door the other night.

So we had a heart to heart. It went on for a while and I could tell we weren't getting anywhere. All she did was cry, and I - who also maintains a super human schedule, doesn't' quite sleep enough, probably doesn't eat as well as I should, basically the 38 year old version of Grace - I found myself getting more and more frustrated.

Did she want to quit? Crying. Scale back? Crying. Cut 1 thing out? crying. crying. crying crying.

By then I was ready to cry, because motherhood is hard and frustrating. She wants to do it all. It all feels important to her. But it's all too hard and SHE CAN'T DO IT.

And then something in me clicked. I had been telling her for 45 minutes she needed a better attitude and then I realized, it's not attitude, it's mindset. And I pulled out my Carol Dweck. That's right, I Carol Dwecked my 14 year old.

"I'm wrong, Grace. I just realized I'm wrong. Your attitude is great. You don't need a better attitude. You need a different mindset."

"What?"

"Mindset. The thoughts you tell yourself. What your brain believes about what you can achieve."

Blank, teary stare.

"Ok, let me tell you a story. There is a psychologist at Stanford and her name is Carol Dweck. She studies how people think and what kind of thought patterns make people successful.

"She did an experiment. She took a bunch of kids and she gave them a puzzle that was way too hard for them. No way they could do it. Then she watched how they reacted. And guess what?

"There were two kinds of kids. The first kind tried a few pieces and when they couldn't figure it out, they got upset. They said things like 'I'm stupid. 'I'm not good at puzzles. 'This is too hard.' "i hate puzzles.'

"But the other group tried a few pieces and when they couldn't figure it out, they got excited and you know what they said? "I' love hard puzzles!'

"They have a growth mindset. It's positive. They have trained their brains to believe they can get better at something, get smarter, achieve things even when something is really hard. So next time you lose a race at track or fall on your butt after an aerial or lose a sparring match - what are you going to say?"

Grace meekly replied, "I love hard puzzles."

"What?!?!"

"I love hard puzzles."

"What?!?!"

"I LOVE HARD PUZZLES!!" She yelled, laughing.

"Growth mindset, baby girl. Growth mindset. Every time you fall down, say out loud to yourself. I love hard puzzles."

I put my arms around her and whispered in her ear, "I love you. You got this. If you want it, keep going and you will get better."

We had a long, happy hug, the kind where I have time to smell her hair - my favorite kind of hug - and she went to bed with new hope.

The next night on her way to bed I asked her how the afternoon track meet went. "Oh I lost," she said with a smile, "but I love hard puzzles."

Last night, after a particularly hard day, where:
- work had been tough and I barely accomplished 1/3 of what I needed to do.
- Chad was sick
- Brynn realized there was bunny pee all over her carpet and she had a wart on her foot
- Had to make dinner in two shifts to accommodate all the schedules
- needed to pack for a trip
- the vacuum was broken
- the house was messy
- Needed to pick up the kids, feed them and get them to bed so I could put in another 3 hours of work

I took out the trash and stopped to sweep up all the soiled bunny bedding Brynn had spilled on the garage floor while cleaning the cage. Oh and did I mention, I never had a chance to shower so I looked amazing :)

Grace came out to get her stuff out of the car.

"How was work today, mom?"

"I don't know honey, pretty hard and frustrating actually."

And sweet Grace brushed her hand longingly over my arm and she walked back up the stairs. "But mom," she said with a smile "you love hard puzzles."

And I got a little flutter in my heart. Things are so hard and I'm failing all over the place, but just maybe I'm succeeding where it really matters.