How can I reframe this thought?

[Kay100]

My son has never cared much about his academic since primary all the way till the middle of this year. He's in 2nd year of high school. So he never put in effort, and he doesn't care about the exam results. But for some reason, from the middle of this year, he started to care and was very motivated in getting a good exam result in the end of the year. He did put in lots of efforts, and had a goal that he wanted to reach. But in the end the exam results were not so good. Now he's feeling down about it.

Right now the way he is thinking is: I put in effort, but the results were bad, that means I'm just not smart. Even if I put in effort, I won't succeed.

This way of thinking seem logical. How can I help him to change this way of thinking and reframe it to a more helpful one?

[kag101]

That's tough. It's hard to stay motivated without getting results. Did he get a better score than before, at least? 

[Kay100]

@kag101 Actually he found his potential in math. He actually didn't put too much effort or time into math but did really well and got the top of the class. Just 6 months ago he was still average in math. I guess he always had this potential but only discovered it when he starts to care about it.

[Origins]

@Kay100 Teach him about neuroplasticity. There’s so much not properly disclosed to the public about the capacity to change the brain, including mental ability, it’s because culture often has no choice but to take black and white positions because people find it difficult to handle the dissonance of nuanced perspectives that contain both pros and cons. I know too many details to disclose them all in this one post. There used to be this nonsense adage, “we only use 10% of our brain”, in reality popular science knows less than 10% of the brain and how to engineer it, let alone how to properly educate the public about the subject. What is more common in science is that it often gets more things wrong than right, but until they believe they’re absolutely right, they have a black and white position towards the negative. It takes extremely good parenting to be able to manage the position you’re in so all the best there. Parenting is by far the most important job in the world, I hope you treat it with the utmost respect, honour and dignity for the ultimate prosperity of your child who deserves the highest enlightenment you’re able to provide them with, of which, takes incredible intelligence. 
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1041608016300231

Feel free to pose questions.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Origins