Intelligence or effort? Learn to praise what is right in your children
Find out what you should praise your children to boost their self-esteem and good development.
Children need to feel loved and secure , but most children also feel good about hearing praise for accuracy and encouraging comments for failed efforts. Genuine and appropriate encouragement helps your child learn to keep trying after failure.
Determining the right time to offer positive praise during a failed effort takes some practice so your child doesn’t see the words as gratuitous or condescending. Intelligence does not always mean success in life , and parents should try to send the right message with praise … Also, as parents you must remember that children are very skilled at recognizing false praise, and these, even if they go with all your good intentions cause profound emotional damage to children.
Index
MOTIVATION VS. PRAISE
Parents sometimes mistake motivation for praise . These two can go together, but the motivation does not need to include words of praise that refer to your child’s intelligence. Encouragement should be understood as positive expressions that emphasize improvement or effort, not necessarily comments that predict the results of the child’s actions. Parents always expect children to achieve “best” to receive praise and appreciation of the family … be in the wrong way.
OPEN AND CLOSED MINDS
Children learn to use intelligence by modeling the way parents introduce and manage cognitive skills. The intelligence mindset should be understood as either open or closed , and the type of praise parents use helps define the perception of the child’s cognitive abilities.
The fixed mindset sees intelligence, both in oneself and in others, as a static trait, while the open-minded group focuses on development and growth. Praising children for their intelligence reinforces a fixed mindset, while praising for effort promotes growth beyond a static belief. Telling your child “I know you can get a 10 instead of an 8 on the test” emphasizes intelligence, rather than focusing on praising educational effort , such as saying, “I know you did your best on that test and I’m proud of it. ”
BETTER PRACTICES
Efforts to develop self-esteem can backfire when parents praise children for their intellectual qualities after a failed attempt at something unrelated to intelligence. For example, a comment that says to the child something like, “You are a smart kid. You can throw the ball!” It confuses young children.
A few general words of encouragement for efforts separate the action from the child, so that children can fail and still feel safe to try again without any personal stigma. Using continuous encouragement as part of a cooperative atmosphere for the family helps children learn self-confidence rather than relying on praise for motivation.
APPROPRIATE COMMENTS
Parents who go against common types of generic compliments, like “Good job!” They also say things like, “That’s cool,” like lazy praise, and claim that the words have little or no value to children.
However, comments that encourage children focus on effort and questions that ask for personal opinions to complete a job or finish a task. Comments such as: “You are a great worker” or “What do you think we should do to solve the problem?” Praise effort and encourage children to use intelligence to solve problems. Your child will learn to do things for himself in the best way!
Dr. Tabriella Perivolaris, Sara's mother and fan of fashion, beauty, motherhood, among others, about the female universe. Since 2018 she has been working as a copywriter, always bringing to her articles a little of her experience and experience as a mother and woman.