QUESTION: I read that it’s not a good idea to say “good job” to your pre-school children or to praise them when they do something like eating all their vegetables or sitting quietly at the dinner table. I’m not sure I understand why. Can you explain this thinking?
BBB: In the field of child development, we’re always coming up with “a better mousetrap” when it comes to raising children. One of those is how we praise kids. The issue is not what is being praised; it is how the praise is delivered.
If you pay attention, you will hear that parents say “Good job!” all the time, about anything and everything the child does or completes. In fact, it is said so much that many of us feel it has lost its meaning completely. It has become kind of a verbal doggie biscuit that is tossed with little thought.
But praise can actually do a big job for the growing child. Praise, when delivered deliberately, can help the child to work hard, try hard, repeat a positive action and even behave in the way the adult hopes.
Well-known psychologist Carol Dweck authored the “Praise Study,” which illustrated this point. (Be sure to read her fantastic book “Mindset,” which has application for all people, not just parents.)
After giving a group of middle-schoolers a test, she divided them into two groups, telling the first group that they were “really smart” and had done “really well” on the test. To the second group she said they were “really hard workers” and had done “really well” on the test.
Explaining to the whole group they had just one more test, she offered that they could take either a more difficult test or one that was the same difficulty as the first had been. Here is the surprise. Across the board, the kids who had been told they were “really smart” chose…wait for it…the easier test; and the “hard workers” chose the harder test.
Praise in the form of saying the kids were “hard workers” encouraged them, underscoring their own ability to do the job, even if it’s hard! That praise did something. It wasn’t just a tossed doggie biscuit.
Praise can work for the parent as well as help the child. So, instead of throwing out, “good job,” which pretty much says and does nothing, parents can comment on just the thing the parent observed and would like to see again: “You cleaned up the whole room. Way to go!” “You came to dinner right when I called you.”
Then there is the issue of our kids becoming praise addicted. That’s another caveat about praising children. Over-praised children come to rely on extrinsic praise from an adult rather than feeling praised intrinsically.
Learning to judge yourself, to feel praised intrinsically, is a necessary motivator for getting through life. So, if parents are always commenting on and judging the child’s actions and behaviors, the child can become dependent upon it, unable to judge for himself and not self-motivated.
On this topic, I could go on and on. Instead, for more information on this exact topic, please reference my book “Just Tell Me What to Say,” especially the subsection The Problem with Praise.
Did I do a “good job” with my explanation?
Contact: info@betsybrownbraun.com or visit her website at betsybrownbraun.com. To submit your parenting questions, email frances@palipost.com.
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