A story about growth mindset
Yetty and the Word at the End
Yetty cannot do the monkey bars, and says so about forty times. A story about the one small word that changes what I cannot do into something else.
3 minutes to read aloud · 😰 Anxious
Yetty could not do the monkey bars.
Not one rung. Yetty had tried on Monday and dropped off, and tried on Tuesday and dropped off, and on Wednesday did not try at all.
"I can't do it," said Yetty. "I'm just not a monkey-bars sort of fluff."
That is Yetty's wobble, and it arrives very fast. Faster than the falling, usually. Yetty is one of the hardest-working fluffs in Candyfloss Land, and also the quickest to decide that something is simply not possible and put it away for ever.
Boingy, who has fallen off more things than anybody, came and sat on the bottom of the frame.
"Say it again," said Boingy.
"I can't do it."
"Now put a word on the end. Yet."
Yetty pulled a face. "That's just the same sentence with a word stuck on it."
"Say it."
"I can't do it... yet," said Yetty, and stopped, because it was not the same sentence at all. The first one had a door shut at the end of it. The second one had a door standing open with nobody in it.
"How far did you get on Tuesday?" said Boingy.
"One rung. Barely."
"And Monday?"
"None."
Boingy said nothing and let Yetty do the sum.
Yetty got to two rungs on Thursday, and two again on Friday, which was infuriating, and Yetty said the whole sentence out loud at the bottom of the frame — I can't do it YET — and went up and did three.
It took until the middle of March.
When Yetty finally went the whole way across, nobody was watching. Yetty dropped down at the far end, alone in the playground, and stood there feeling enormous.
Now Yetty is the fluff other fluffs come to when something is too hard, and Yetty always says the same thing, and it is never you can do it, because that is not true yet and everybody knows it.
Yetty says: "How far did you get last time?"
And then: "So you can't do it yet."
