Grown-Ups Get Stuck Too — The Tricky Tin Challenge

First your child watches you work hard at something fiddly and nearly give up before you succeed. Then they get a tricky challenge of their own — a small treasure locked inside layers of wrapping, bands and knots — and you keep your hands off while they battle through it.

  1. Prepare two challenges in advance. Yours — a tin or jar that is honestly awkward to open (wrapped in several rubber bands and a loosely knotted string). Theirs — a small treasure (sticker, note, snack) inside a tin, inside a zip bag, inside a sock tied with a simple knot, with a few rubber bands round the outside. It should take about five minutes of effort.
  2. Go first, and struggle out loud. For about half a minute, try, fail, and try differently — “This is hard. That didn’t work. I’m going to try another way. I’m not giving up yet.” Then succeed.
  3. Hand over theirs. Say “This one is tricky too. I think you can figure it out.”
  4. Sit on your hands. Watch warmly. If they look to you, describe rather than fix — “You got two bands off already.”
  5. If they are truly stuck, give a hint, not a hand. Point or ask a question (“What is holding that closed?”). Do not take the object.
  6. Name the effort afterwards. “You kept trying different ways for a long time — that’s how you got it.”

Variation: swap the wrapped tin for any honest fiddly job — threading a lace through a row of holes, untangling a knotted skipping rope, fitting a duvet corner into its cover, freeing toy figures frozen in an ice block with warm water and a spoon.

Requirements

  • Space: A table or a patch of floor
  • Surface: Any
  • Materials: Two small tins or plastic jars, rubber bands, string, a zip bag, a sock, a small treasure for each
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child
  • Supervision: Active but hands-off — adult models first, then watches without taking over

Rationale & Objective

Persistence is partly learned by watching. Leonard, Lee & Schulz (2017) found that even 15-month-olds tried harder on their own difficult task after seeing an adult work hard to reach a goal than after seeing the adult succeed effortlessly. With 4- and 5-year-olds, Leonard, Garcia & Schulz (2020) found that children persisted most when an adult practised what they preached — putting in visible effort, succeeding, and talking about the value of trying. The other half of the activity is what the adult does not do: Leonard and colleagues (2021) showed that 4- and 5-year-olds whose adult took over a hard puzzle persisted less on the next task than children whose adult taught them instead or who were in a baseline comparison group. Praise that names the effort and strategy rather than the child’s cleverness is linked to a more resilient attitude to challenge years later (Gunderson et al., 2013). This matters beyond the tin: preschool attention span-persistence predicted educational outcomes into adulthood in McClelland and colleagues’ (2013) longitudinal study. The exercise targets Head Start ELOF Goal P-ATL 7 (child persists in tasks), Teaching Strategies GOLD Objective 11b, and the subdomain’s benchmark of five or more minutes on a moderately hard task before seeking help.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: tries one approach, then hands the object back or says “I can’t” within a minute; pulls harder rather than differently; watches the adult’s face for rescue
  • Developing: works for 2–3 minutes; gets through the easy layers alone; needs encouragement or a pointed hint at the knot; shows frustration but returns to the task
  • Proficient: persists for 5 or more minutes before asking for help, changes strategy when one fails, uses some of the adult’s self-talk (“I’ll try another way”), and is visibly proud of opening it alone
  • Advanced: asks for a harder one; refuses offered help (“don’t tell me!”); explains afterwards which part was hardest and how they solved it; encourages someone else who is stuck

Safety Notes

  • Rubber bands can snap back toward the face — use wide, loose bands and show how to roll them off rather than stretch them; keep bands away from mouths and off wrists and fingers
  • Use string short enough that it cannot loop round a neck, and plastic or tin containers rather than glass
  • No scissors or teeth as opening tools — if the child reaches for either, loosen the knot a little instead
  • Pitch the difficulty honestly. A task far beyond the child teaches giving up; if they are distressed rather than productively frustrated, simplify a layer on the spot and try a harder version another day
  • If a child regularly melts down within seconds of any difficulty across many settings, mention it to their teacher or paediatrician

Hints

  • Playfulness: call it a “dragon’s vault” or “pirate’s lockbox” and put a ridiculous treasure inside — a note saying “you win a piggyback ride,” or one sock from a pair they must then find
  • Sustain interest: let the child wrap a tricky tin for you. Building a challenge for someone else is its own persistence task, and watching you struggle with their knot is delightful
  • Common mistake: fake struggling that turns into a pantomime, or “helping” by loosening things when the child sighs. Choose something that is honestly a bit awkward for you, and count silently to twenty before offering even a hint
  • No equipment: skip the tins and do your own real fiddly job in front of the child with the same out-loud effort — threading a needle, a jar that will not open, a knotted shoelace — then give them the next lace
  • Cross-domain: knots, bands and zips are fine-motor and two-handed coordination work; naming the feeling (“that was frustrating, and you kept going”) builds emotional vocabulary; timing the effort with a sand timer adds a sense of duration
  • Progression: two layers and no knot → four layers with one loose knot → a tighter knot or a screw-top inside → child wraps one for the adult → a longer real-life task (untangling fairy lights, a harder jigsaw) approached with the same routine

Sources

  • Leonard, Lee & Schulz (2017), “Infants make more attempts to achieve a goal when they see adults persist,” Science, 357(6357)
  • Leonard, Garcia & Schulz (2020), “How adults’ actions, outcomes, and testimony affect preschoolers’ persistence,” Child Development, 91(4)
  • Leonard, Martinez, Dashineau, Park & Mackey (2021), “Children persist less when adults take over,” Child Development, 92(4), 1325–1336
  • Gunderson et al. (2013), “Parent praise to 1- to 3-year-olds predicts children’s motivational frameworks 5 years later,” Child Development, 84(5)
  • McClelland, Acock, Piccinin, Rhea & Stallings (2013), “Relations between preschool attention span-persistence and age 25 educational outcomes,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 28(2)
  • Head Start ELOF — Approaches to Learning, Goal P-ATL 7 (child persists in tasks)
  • Teaching Strategies GOLD — Objective 11b (persists)