Tim Malone.id.au

Why it’s wrong to praise your kids: this is the title of an article in the Weekend Australian Magazine this morning. In it, Po Bronson, author of Why Do I Love These People? discusses results of various surveys conducted on the now slightly controversial topic of child self esteem.

To give a bit of background, borrowed from the article, it was in 1969 when The Psychology of Self Esteem publication printed an opinion that “self-esteem was the single most important facet of a person” that more attention was given to the self-esteem issues of our children. The article provides a couple of good examples: “Competitions were frowned upon. Soccer coaches stopped counting goals and handed out trophies to everyone. … Criticism was replaced with ubiquitous, even undeserved, praise”.

I’m sure many of us can identify with this. It is almost rooted in us to be nice to people – kids especially – and encourage them by telling them what they’re doing is good.

But, and this is what the article argues, it is important to realise the negative outcomes of giving praise to a child the “wrong way”. It refers to an experiment conducted by psychologist Carol Dweck on the effect of praise in schools. Dweck’s team first conducted an easy test with students, and told some “You must be smart at this”. Others they told “You must have worked really hard”. In a second round of tests, the students were offered a choice between an easy test again, or a more difficult test – the students were told they would learn from trying out the harder test.

Most of the kids who were told they tried hard on the first test took the challenge for the second test. Most of kids who were told they were smart took the easy test. Dweck’s conclusion was that the kids had “chosen to look smart to avoid the risk of being embarrased”.

In later tests, the kids who had been praised for their effort had improved their abilities, whereas the kids who were told they were smart had actually performed worse. Dweck said: “Emphasising effort gives a child a variable they can control. They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasising natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

Now I’m not going to cover the entire article here, but it does cite many other tests and examples and quite frankly, is damn convincing. It talks about sincerity of praise, and that research suggests over praised kids become too concerned with image maintenance – they become competitive and have to tear others down.

I think this is all worth thinking about very carefully.

I know for me personally I had self esteem issues in high school. I really can’t remember too much about what may have caused it, but I do remember that I was told I was smart by many people. For awhile I didn’t believe it – it’s only recently that I’ve realised that I actually do have a bit of a clue about how to notice and analyse things, and an idea of what’s going on. But could this make me become too concerned with image maintenance? Could I be trying to compete with others in order to make myself look good? Could I be giving up on the harder things because I know I can just excel at the easy tasks?

Looking at various recent and not so recent events in my life, I can see that this might be a bit of a problem for me.

Although Po Bronson was noticeably speaking to the parents and teachers in her article, I think it’s important knowledge for every type of leader who gives praise to other people – kids or not. Especially, I see it as being important knowledge for those who think they may be the subject of over praise and are seeing some of the “smart kid” behaviour in themselves.