Praising Children In A Balanced Way
Recognizing the good things children do is both normal and beneficial. Children need to know when they do something right, as well as when they do things wrong, so they can learn to develop properly around them. However, is it okay to praise children constantly?
Many parents make the mistake of praising each of their children’s actions. These praises do not go beyond mere compliments and, instead of benefiting the children, they end up harming them.
How does this happen? Very simple: there is no appreciation of reality and a healthy critical attitude is not encouraged, just as effort is not valued either.
In other words, valuing what’s on the surface, while it sounds sweet, doesn’t encourage children to be better and, moreover, leaves them stagnant. Praise makes them believe that they are already perfect and that they will always have their parents to praise and value them. Obviously, this affects personality development.
Is praising children negative?
It’s not about letting go of all the positive things the child does or being strict with praise. It’s not about measuring the number of compliments, but about giving them the right space.
In fact, telling children they did a good job, smiling at them for some well-crafted activity and applauding their efforts is a gesture that helps them to excel and grow healthily.
However, it is necessary to act in moderation and try not to praise everything that children do without a specific reason. We must be very clear about what and when to recognize something. If we praise and congratulate everything, we won’t favor them.
The Stanford University Experiment
A study conducted at Stanford University by a group of experts led by Dr. Carol Dweck reached important conclusions on the subject. This study was based on conducting a social experiment that consisted of offering puzzles to a group of 11-year-old children so that they could assemble them.
After putting them together, each child got a score as a result and, together with it, a small 6-word appreciation. Next, the children were classified into two groups, group A, which received praise for their intelligence, and group B, which was congratulated for their effort in putting the puzzle together.
Afterwards, both groups of children were asked how they would like the difficulty of the next test to be. They were given the choice between an easy level and a hard level. And it was very interesting to witness what each group chose.
Results and conclusions
In group A, 2 out of 3 children chose what was easy. On the other hand, in group B, 9 out of 10 children chose the difficult option. The first group of children did not want to lose the merits of being intelligent, while the second group wanted to see how far they could go with their effort.
In the third part of the test, both groups were given a puzzle of great difficulty, so much so that neither of them was able to put it together.
The difference was that children in group B tried to ride it for much longer, enjoying the activity without losing confidence in their abilities. Meanwhile, the exact opposite happened with the children in group A.
In the last part of the study, other puzzles were given to both groups, with the same level of difficulty as those given in the initial part of the test. As a result, children in group A decreased their performance by 20%; while children in group B increased it by 30%.
Thus, this experiment was repeated three times with different groups of children and very similar results were obtained. Thus, Dr. Carol Dweck concluded that excessive praise impairs children’s motivation and therefore can impair their performance.
There are other studies on the impact of excessive praise on children. And just as there are experts who say it is good to praise children frequently, there are others who say that praise should be moderated to avoid promoting unhealthy attitudes in future adults.
