Any parent of young children has been in the position before. You're late for school, work, an appointment, etc., and you're stuck waiting on your toddler who is in his "I can do it myself" phase. You've packed lunches, helped get teeth brushed, and gathered all the necessary items, but all this work is undone by the fact your child insists on putting on his shoes by himself. A task that should only take a few seconds begins to feel like an eternity, while all along you are getting later and later.
As frustrating (and familiar) as this scenario is, it is an important stage in a child's development toward independence. Often, it can be tempting as parents (especially in a scenario like the one above) to do things for their children that they can do for themselves. However, the "struggle" that children face when they encounter something new is important for their learning and development. If we as adults steal their struggle from them by seeking to make everything in their lives easy, then we are hampering their ability to grow and hurting their future.
This is true in school as well as in life. In school, it can be easy to get our focus solely on students' grades rather than the process that goes into that grade. While not always a perfect measure, student grades ought to be a reflection of the amount of work the students have put in and their level of mastery of the content. When parents and students focus merely on getting grades, then the learning process and the struggle that produces learning suffer.
Why Productive Struggle Is Important
No one enjoys struggling, so parents often seek to solve their children's problems or fix their issues for them. Teachers can fall into this trap as well, by answering every question a student asks or by essentially teaching to the test. While some students require more teacher assistance, productive struggle is vital for most students. Struggle produces several positive benefits in children:
Struggling builds critical thinking and problem-solving skills. If the adults in their lives do all of the thinking and working for them, then students will never develop the skills necessary to be successful in life.
Struggling promotes a growth mindset in students. A fixed mindset says that a person's intelligence and capacity to learn are fixed, while a growth mindset is that these qualities can be improved through hard work. When children are forced to struggle through something (an assignment, a class, a setback, etc.) and come out on the other side of it, they gain valuable experience that will help them the next time they face something difficult.
Struggling builds independence. If children never learn to struggle and do things on their own, then they will forever be dependent upon those around them--their parents, teachers, the government--and will never learn to fend for themselves.
Ultimately, struggling is an important part of any learning process and leads to growth. Before you can be great at anything, you must struggle. Struggling will deepen learning, develop independence and confidence in students, and prepare them for the real-world challenges they will face after graduation. Parents would be wise not to steal the struggle from their child by seeking to solve every problem, and teachers must likewise remember that struggle is often productive to students and vital to the learning process.
I recently came across a quote that read, "The brain that does the work is the one that does the learning." If learning is truly the goal (and not merely getting grades), then parents and teachers must allow students to struggle so that they build mastery, gain confidence, and move toward independence.
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