WiseTip: AL-PER-M1626-I01A

Approaches to Learning

Promoting Persistence

Expect your toddler to occasionally resist you, especially when they are persevering to master a task and when you need to move on to another activity.

Messer, D. (1995). Mastery motivation: Past, present and future. In R. H. MacTurk & G. Morgan (Eds.), Mastery motivation: Origins, conceptualizations, and applications (pp. 293–316). Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

WHY IT MATTERS

By 15 months, infants strive to complete tasks independently, often resisting intervention from others. It is at this period that infants are thought to display a “persistent task approach”,

Messer, D. (1995). Mastery motivation: Past, present and future. In R. H. MacTurk & G. Morgan (Eds.), Mastery motivation: Origins, conceptualizations, and applications (pp. 293–316). Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

which is the ability to shift attention between subcomponents of a task to attain a final goal while maintaining focus on the larger task at hand, for example, by finding a correctly shaped block, inserting in the correct hole, then moving to the next shape until all blocks have been inserted into the shape sorter.

Banerjee PN, Tamis-Lemonda CS. (2007). Infants' persistence and mothers' teaching as predictors of toddlers' cognitive development. Infant Behav Dev.;30(3):479–491.

Caregivers who can understand the child’s changing displays of persistence at different stages, and create an environment for the child to develop persistence, can help the child develop this approach to learning.