Do you find yourself throwing adjectives and hoorays toward your kids like a cheerleader on crack? It turns out all of those encouragements --"great job honey!" and "way to share the SLIDE!" --yelled at the playground and elsewhere may end up undermining little Billy's confidence and making him overly dependent on outward praise, rather than building a sense of true confidence.
According to a recent article in New York Magazine, the type of praise you offer your child is more important than frequency. We are clearly a generation of parents who overdoes many things. It could be all those "Free to be You and Me" songs and "you can be anything you want to be" pep talks from our childhoods that created the emotional talk pile-on typical of parenting today.
Whatever the cause, the study cited in the New York Magazine piece found that parents who praise the effort put forth imbue more confidence in their children than those who simply say "You are so smart." At the end of the day, people derive more lasting satisfaction from mastering skills and completing tasks, than compliments about form or grace or personal attributes. Next time I strap on my late 70s cheer-speak, I'm going to recalibrate my hollering to praise hard work, rather than overall fabulousness.
Photo Credit [New York Magazine]
