Ask Mr. Dad: The downside of praise

Dear Mr. Dad: I’m almost embarrassed to say this, but I’m sick and tired of hearing parents tell their kids that they’re “awesome,” or “amazing” or “incredible,” or any of the other overused words people use these days. The fact is that most kids aren’t any of those things. I’m wondering whether we’re doing damage to our society with our nonstop praise. What’s your take on this?

A: I couldn’t agree with you more. We live in an era where we give kids trophies for showing up – regardless of how well they play – and we rave about everything they do, whether it’s rave-worthy or not (and in most cases, it’s not).

It all started a few decades ago with some very well-intentioned mental health professionals who told us that low self-esteem was the root of all problems. In the mid-1980s, the state of California did a very expensive report on self-esteem that summed up this attitude quite nicely: “Lack of self-esteem is central to most personal and social ills plaguing our state and nation as we approach the end of the 20th century.” The solution – suggested by those same mental health professionals – was to make people (especially kids) feel good about themselves. So we started praising our children more than parents of previous generations did. Over time, that praise ballooned into worship. And the results haven’t been pretty.

The first casualty was the English language, which lost the use of perfectly good words like “awesome,” which no longer means what people think it does. (Does my asking for extra pickles on my sandwich really rate “totally awesome”?) But the true victims of our excessive praise have been our children. Study after study has found that too much praise does exactly the opposite of what we hope: It reduces children’s self-esteem, lowers their motivation, and discourages them from taking risks, challenging themselves, and trying new things.

Two types of praise: inflated praise (“that is the most amazing drawing I’ve ever seen”) and personal praise (“you’re awesome”) are especially likely to backfire, according to Eddie Brummelman, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam. And the lower the kids’ self-esteem to begin with, the worse the results.

Here’s how it works. Our kids aren’t idiots. They know perfectly well that you’re lying when you say “that’s the most amazing drawing I’ve ever seen,” but they don’t want to disappoint you. So next time they have a chance to try something new, they’ll opt for something easy. If they end up failing, they’ll feel much worse about themselves than kids who receive what’s called “process praise,” which focuses on the work a child puts in rather than the outcome (“Wow, you got an A – you really worked hard on that!” vs. “Wow, you got an A – you are incredibly smart!”).

Unfortunately, as a culture, we have a tendency to value what we see as natural ability over hard work. Most schools, for example, have programs for “gifted and talented” kids. But according to Stanford mathematics professor Jo Boaler, “… labeling of students as gifted hurts not only the students who are deemed as having no gifts but also the students who are given the gifted label.” Sounds counterintuitive, right? But as Boaler explains, calling kids gifted, “sets them on a fixed mindset pathway, making them vulnerable and less likely to take risks in order to avoid making mistakes and potentially losing their gifted label.”

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying we should never praise our kids. Of course we should. But that praise needs to be sincere and focus on things they can change (hard work, for example) instead of on abstract qualities (like intelligence) that they can’t.

Read Armin Brott’s blog at www.DadSoup.com, or follow him on Twitter, @mrdad.