From: The Washington Post
Stop heaping praise on your kids.
The Washington Post:
I’ve done it. You’ve probably done it. And we’re hurting kids when we do.
According to the journal Psychological Science, heaping praise on a child with low self-esteem only does more damage. Doing the same to a kid who’s already confident makes them thrive.
“Inflated praise can backfire with those kids who seem to need it the most — kids with low self-esteem,” said Eddie Brummelman, lead author of the study and a visiting scholar at The Ohio State University, according to the association.
So what is inflated praise? In this study, it consists of one word that ups the ante a bit. Instead of “You did a good job,” you say “You did an incredibly good job.”
…
Parents seemed to think that the children with low self-esteem needed to get extra praise to make them feel better,” said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study, according to Psychological Science.“It’s understandable why adults would do that, but we found in another experiment that this inflated praise can backfire in these children.”
Read the whole story: The Washington Post
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