Parents And Children Benefit From A Growth Mindset | Clips | Dad Saves America

0:00 - What is a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset? You've brought this up several times. And I know it's an essential ingredient to the sort of stew of acting. - Yeah. So very simply, it's neuroplasticity. It's the neuroscience- - Very simply, it's neuroplasticity. - Yeah, your brain- - Make it a little simpler than neuroplasticity for me. - Your brain is growing and changing all the time. And as you learn new things, your neurons actually change pathways.

0:26 So you do not have a little part of your brain for math that is either big or small, good or bad. You can practice that part of your learning and get good at math. This is how we teach growth mindset to six year olds. So we hang rubber bands on our fingers, they're little, some are big, some are tight, some are fat. And we talk about this is your brain. Now some of the rubber bands are really easy to spread like this.

0:54 That could be like for you, it could be filmmaking, something that's easy. You do it. You're good at it. You might have worked really hard, but it comes naturally. A tiny band is something that doesn't come easily. You have to stretch that, you really have to get that rubber band going, you have to really stretch it. - Going to the gym on a regular basis. - Yeah, honestly. So that's something, but if you keep doing it, that will grow.

1:14 So the vision of the rubber bands really helps the young people understand that that's their brain, it's plastic, it can grow and stretch. And the things that feel really hard to you right when you wanna quit, you can remember you just have to work harder and it's going, it's gonna stretch. You're gonna grow. So they know they can keep growing and keep learning. And that was really good for me. I grew up with a fixed mindset.

1:36 I just wanted to get good grades. When I would start to struggle, I would say I'm terrible at that. I'll never be good at that. And it was like the higher math or, you know, all of that. I just thought I'm terrible at it. Now I'm like, you know what? I wanna go take those math courses 'cause now I know I can learn anything. I'm not gonna go do that. (laughs) But the ideas, I'm excited about life because I can learn anything.

1:58 That's a funny thing about this act and model, it's not just for the children. We have seen the parents become transformed by it because the excitement around learning and doing filters back home, I've had several parents say my kid is on a hero's journey, I want a hero's journey. And they go off and do really interesting things. It's really transformative for the parents when they start thinking of their child's individual passions and their individual genius, not what they wish their child would turn out to be.

2:32 There's a great story. One of the act-in dads, I love him to death. He loved sports. Big baseball player, when his son was really young coaching T-ball all the baseball teams. They came to act in and we did a play. So the children wrote the play, produced the play, sold the concessions, wrote the program, did the whole thing for this play and it was on this historical stage in downtown Austin. After that experience, the child went to this dad and said dad, I actually don't like baseball.

3:02 I wanna act. And the dad came to me and said, he's crushed. His heart is broken 'cause his whole future is now different. He really pictured himself going to baseball games. That was his future for his child was the two of them doing baseball together. And then he said, but then I realized, it's his journey. It's not my journey. So the dad started taking acting classes and started doing fun, acting things together. They ended up making a film, the son morphed into filmmaking and the dad got so because he wanted to be with his son, just followed the curiosity that way.

3:35 And they ended up making a major motion film together. - We went to see the movie. This is "The Carpenters." Yeah. - And so it's an amazing thing when you and that's the teachability, but for the parents too. Follow the curiosity and your life gets so much better too. I think we'd become afraid and we think our children have to learn this, this, and this, or they're gonna have terrible lives or they won't get into college when really if they can just learn how to learn and learn what they love to do, that's a really good life.