ABSTRACT
More able students sometimes have trouble connecting personal effort to achievement, seeing it as something beyond their control. Perhaps the reason for this is that much of what they do and learn can be achieved with relatively little effort. Whilst this may seem to be a good position to occupy it has its drawbacks. This chapter explores the part that parents play in the development of character, or as Tough says, persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence. We talk a good deal here about the importance of reading and of the day-to-day strategies parents (and teachers) might use to enhance learning. The chapter also examines how parents can support the idea of desirable difficulties, encourage academic literacy, and address semantic contingencies, in order to support students to find better ways to deal with challenging work. As a result, they learn to process their learning at a deeper level and, in the end, find retention easier.
