The Best Gift You Can Give Your Child Isn't a Toy — It's a Growth Mindset

And the research is clear on how to actually build one.

"If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is teach them to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning."

That line belongs to Dr. Carol Dweck, the Stanford University psychologist whose decades of research fundamentally changed how we understand human potential. Dweck and her colleagues found that students' mindsets — how they perceive their abilities — played a key role in their motivation and achievement, and that changing students' mindsets could boost their achievement. The insight sounds simple. The implications are enormous.

Because herd is the thing: most enrichment programs for children focus on things kids can do that day; that season. What Dweck's growth mindset insights suggest is that we can train kids how to think about what's possible for them to do. 

Why Growth Mindset Has to Be Practiced

Dweck's research introduced the world to two competing belief systems: a fixed mindset, which holds that intelligence and ability are innate and unchangeable, and a growth mindset, which holds that intelligence and ability can be developed through effort and persistence. Children with a growth mindset view challenges as opportunities to learn and grow — and these beliefs significantly influence learning behaviors and academic outcomes.

But here is where most programs, and parents, get it wrong.

Dweck and research collaborator Kyla Haimovitz found many parents endorse a growth mindset, but react to their children's mistakes as though they are problematic or harmful, rather than helpful. In these cases, their children develop more of a fixed mindset about their intelligence. Telling a child that they are "so smart" after success or expressing disappointment after failure, quietly teaching the oppositie of whta you intend.

Growth mindset is not a poster on a classroom wall, it's a habit. Like every other habit, it is built through repetition, experience, and the right kind of coaching.

That's where youth enrichment programming with an evidence-based curriculum becomes essential.

What the Research Says About Evidence-Based Youth Enrichment

The evidence for structured, skills-based Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) youth development programs is both broad and compelling. A landmark meta-analysis of 213 school-based social-emotional learning programs involving 270,034 kindergarten through high school students found that participants demonstrated significantly improved social and emotional skills, attitudes, behavior, and academic performance reflecting an 11-point-percentile-point gain in achievement compared to controls.

That's not a rounding error. That's a measurable, replicable shift in how children perform. It is  driven not by drilling academic content, but by building the internal tools children use to approach all learning.

Hundreds of studies involving more than one million students worldwide across PreK–12 offer consistent evidence that SEL has a positive impact on students' academic achievement, with stronger SEL skills contributing to positive lifetime outcomes up to 18 years later.

Perhaps most striking for families thinking about where to invest their time and money: analysis of six evidence-based SEL programs has demonstrated that the benefits significantly outweigh the costs, estimating for every dollar invested in SEL there is an $11 return.

The case for SEL youth enrichment grounded in an evidence-based curriculum isn't aspirational. It is economics and development.

How DashStrom Turns Growth Mindset Theory Into Practice

Carol Dweck's research reshaped how the world understands success. Her insight, that abilities are developed through effort, forms the backbone of DashStrom's philosophy.

But understanding growth mindset intellectually is one thing. Living it is another.

DashStrom turns growth mindset theory into physical, repeatable, embodied training. Our programs immerse kids in experiences where creating challenge is the goal. Instead of avoiding mistakes, children are encouraged to explore them. Coaches are trained to frame effort as progress, not just a precursor to it. We weave self development reflection into every class, giving kids language and structure to recognize not just that they overcame difficulty, but how they did it. 

Dweck has emphasized that mindsets aren't fixed. Structured, multi-session interventions have been found to help those who are struggling academically. This is especially true when they help students counter the belief that traits are fixed and mistakes indicate lack of ability. DashStrom's curriculum is built precisely around this principle: reframing challenge as data, mistakes as direction, and effort as the mechanism for growth.

This repetition turns growth mindset from a slogan, into a habit; one built through an experience that is structured, coached, and consistent.

Over time, kids begin to approach challenges differently. They persist longer. They recover faster. They stop defining themselves by immediate outcomes and start trusting the process. Parents often tell us: "My child doesn't give up as easily anymore." That shift, subtle but profound, is exactly the gift Dweck describes.

Why Coaching Matters as Much as Curriculum

It all begins with the right coach. That's why DashStrom invests as deeply in coach training as in curriculum design. Research shows that teachers and coaches who claim a growth mindset but do not follow through in practical application can produce students who trend toward a fixed mindset. Knowing the theory of growth mindset is not enough. What children need is consistent modeling: adults who treat their own mistakes as learning opportunities, who praise process rather than outcome, and who create environments where effort is genuinely celebrated.

DashStrom coaches are trained to do exactly that. Every game is designed not just to challenge the body, but to create the conditions for a growth mindset moment. A fall, getting tired, coming in second place, these are experiences that allow children to have a growth mindset moment. At the end of each class, we aim to spotlight the children who showed resilience rather than the ones who finished first. Every class reinforces the same message, in a different way: effort is the path.

This is what separates a youth enrichment program from an activity. An activity keeps kids busy, but enrichment, built upon evidence-based learnings, can build capacity.

The Long Game: What We're Really Building

DashStrom does not promise easy wins. In fact, we don’t promise wins at all! What we do stand behind is meaningful growth.

The children who move through DashStrom's programs are not just learning to run faster, jump higher, or try a new skill. They are learning to be the kind of people who run toward challenges rather than away from them. They are embodying that the discomfort of difficulty is a signal of growth, not a stop sign that they are not good enough. 

That's a skill that transfers into classrooms, friendships, careers, and every hard thing life will eventually ask of them.

Because children grow through challenge. And when kids learn to love challenge, learning becomes lifelong habit, a key indicator of longer term health.

Sources

1. Dweck, C. S. (2015). Carol Dweck revisits the 'growth mindset.' Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-carol-dweck-revisits-the-growth-mindset/2015/09

   
   

2. CASEL. What does the research say? Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-does-the-research-say/

   
   

3. Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., & Schellinger, K. B. (2011). The impact of enhancing students' social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405–432. PubMed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21291449/