The Trouble With Bright Girls

I don&#x27;t think this is limited to girls. I have read in some parenting books about the number of boys being diagnosed with ADHD might be related to this feeling, that they try something and can&#x27;t get it, then just get frustrated and move on.<p>We have tried to be particularly encouraging with our 18-month old son. From what we have read, often saying &quot;you are so smart&quot; as led to many children giving up when they face a tough task as they feel they must not be smart enough to figure it out. Instead, we say &quot;you worked hard&quot;, &quot;good work&quot;, &quot;you put time into it&quot;, etc. Anything to encourage the act of working rather than how smart he must be.<p>Another book suggested having just 3-5 toys in a room, rather than the 50 we have now, so the amount of concentration is focused instead of moving from one to the next. Now if we can just get the 4 grandparents with just this 1 grandchild to stop buying him things! Probably going to hide everything when they are not here instead.

&gt; She found that bright girls, when given something to learn that was particularly foreign or complex, were quick to give up - and the higher the girls&#x27; IQ, the more likely they were to throw in the towel. In fact, the straight-A girls showed the most helpless responses. Bright boys, on the other hand, saw the difficult material as a challenge, and found it energizing. They were more likely to redouble their efforts, rather than giving up.<p>A prestigious English school for girls recognised this problem, and ran &quot;failure week&quot;. Trying and failing is much better than not trying.<p>(<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16879336" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;news&#x2F;education-16879336</a>)<p>(<a href="http://www.wimbledonhigh.gdst.net/failure-week.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wimbledonhigh.gdst.net&#x2F;failure-week.html</a>)<p>Other techniques that some schools use are to stop asking students to put their hands up to answer a question - the teacher will pick a student who then has to try to answer. Being wrong is fine. The wrongness is where people learn.

FWIM: The linked article is from 2011.