The problem with praise

Praise is something that we should definitely give our children. As they find their way in the world and make their way through the myriad skills they must acquire some encouraging words from parents and others who care help them deal with the setbacks, triumphs, and challenges. As with all things though the dose matters; just because some praise is good doesn’t always mean that more is better as a study has shown.

The study involved children being asked to draw a van Gogh painting called “Wild Roses”. Those children then either received appropriate praise, inflated praise, or no praise at all. After this the children were asked to draw other pictures but they were given a choice. They could either draw easy pictures that they were told would not teach them much, or draw difficult pictures where they might make mistakes but they would learn a lot.

After conducting tests to establish the levels of self-esteem each of the children had, it was found that children with low self-esteem who received inflated praise were more likely to choose the easy pictures while children with high self-esteem who received inflated praise chose the more difficult pictures.

Exactly what is going on here is hard to establish. It might be that children with low self-esteem feel they won’t be able to maintain high standards and so avoid new challenges. Whatever the mechanism though it shows that in raising children there really are no short-cuts. You need to know your child, know where their self-esteem lies, and appropriately praise them as much as they can handle. There is no “one size fits all” for children, or people for that matter. Having said that, if you love your kids and show them that you do then you won’t go too far wrong.