{"id":845,"date":"2014-09-16T07:24:01","date_gmt":"2014-09-16T07:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/insideout.insidewp.test\/?p=845"},"modified":"2014-09-16T07:24:01","modified_gmt":"2014-09-16T07:24:01","slug":"zee-top","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/2014\/09\/16\/zee-top\/","title":{"rendered":"Zee Top"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cZee Top.\u201d The black spray painted words clearly indicate the highest point on the rock. The lake is a full 20 feet below, and almost 10 feet out horizontally from the crest of what my kids call, \u201cThe Jumping Rock.\u201d My son decided it was a goal of his to make that jump into the waters of Lake Okanagan before our time camping at Ellison Provincial Park was over.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

So, over the course of the first few days we were there, he set out to work his way up the rock. This year he did not start at the \u201cSmall,\u201d a shelf of rock about eight feet up. He didn\u2019t even start at the \u201cMedium.\u201d He started at \u201cLarge,\u201d a point about 15 feet up, and methodically worked his way\u2014one step at a time\u2014up to \u201cZee Top.\u201d<\/p>\n

While he was working on this, I was back on the beach reading the\u00a0book, Mindset<\/em> by Carol S. Dweck (the middle school staff all read the book over the summer and we are going to be discussing it). Dweck argues that there are two basic mindsets, a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. When a person has a \u00a0growth mindset\u00a0<\/strong> <\/span><\/span> they accept the idea that mistakes are opportunities to learn. Additionally, a growth mindset means that the person is willing to take risks in learning; to be willing to tackle challenges and literally grow from the experiences.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, a \u00a0fixed mindset\u00a0<\/strong><\/span> describes someone who believes they are limited by their abilities and talent. People with a fixed mindset tend to avoid challenges as that sets them up for failure. Taking that one step further, fixed mindset people see failure as an admission of poor ability and a lack of talent.<\/p>\n

As I put the book down and swam out to the Jumping Rock to watch my kids have a great time in the lake, it struck me that my son was exhibiting a growth mindset. He was slowly working his way up to the top of the rock.\u00a0 In this case there wasn’t really an allowance for a mistake (as that would have meant injury), but he was focused on meeting the challenge, and he was willing to put in the work in to get there.<\/p>\n

I arrived on scene just in time to see him launch from Zee Top.\u00a0 I experienced all those mixed parental emotions: I was worried for his safety, proud that he had succeeded, and amazed at both his athletic ability and the fact that I had just witnessed one of those moments where our kids take a step toward growing up.\u00a0 It was awesome!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cZee Top.\u201d The black spray painted words clearly indicate the highest point on the rock. The lake is a full 20 feet below, and almost 10 feet out horizontally from the crest of what my kids call, \u201cThe Jumping Rock.\u201d My son decided it was a goal of his to make that jump into the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}