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My first thought is,
what good does it do? Does it benefit your children in some way? Does
it benefit your relationships with them?
I do believe that praise can be quite harmful, both to the child and to the relationship between parent and child.
Many parents use praise in the hopes of bolstering their child’s
self-esteem. In reality, praise can cause a child’s self-worth to
diminish as what others believe about her takes on more importance than
what she believes about herself.
When we praise, we shift the focus to ourselves, to what we think about
what the child has done. This implies that our assessment of the
situation is what’s important. This implication is detrimental to
the child’s sense of the value of her own opinion. She may begin
to look to others rather than trusting herself.
Other parents think of praise as a harmless way to get their kids to do
what the parents think is good or important. They imagine that a few
well-timed, “Good sharing!” comments will do wonders to
help their children develop generosity. I’d argue that there is
no harmless way to manipulate another person’s behavior.
Manipulation is dishonest no matter what form it takes. And, in fact,
there is no evidence that praising a child for sharing will contribute
to her sharing more often—just the opposite appears to be true. A
child praised for sharing is less likely to be intrinsically motivated
to share.
In many cases praise seems to become a habit completely devoid of
thought. I often see parents who respond to their child’s call
of, “Mom, look!” with a brief pause in their conversation
or a glance up from their book, just long enough to utter a “Good
job!” They give a canned response at the expense of any real
connection with their child in the moment.
I have also seen parents praise so constantly and for such inane things
that the situation becomes ridiculous. But to the child it is serious.
Her worth is being measured by someone she loves. As Alfie Kohn says in
Punished by Rewards, “the most notable aspect of a positive
judgment is not that it is positive but that it is a judgment.”
Lurking behind that judgment is an assumption that there is a hierarchy
in place. The person giving praise is condescending to the person being
praised. This is often made painfully clear by the tone of voice in
which these phrases are delivered.
Am I saying you shouldn’t react in any way if your child draws a
beautiful picture or runs faster than she ever has before and wants to
share her excitement with you? Of course not. We can (and should) be
authentic with the people we love. We can be touched by their
generosity or amazed by their creativity or thrilled by their
happiness. But even in the best of cases, where a parent has no
ulterior motive, saying, “Good ______” really isn’t
saying much of anything at all.
Rue Kream is living happily ever
after with
her husband, Jon, and two children, Dagny and Rowan. She is a
passionate advocate of unschooling
and respectful parenting and is involved in the creation and
maintenance of the
Unschooling.info website. Her book, Parenting A
Free Child: An
Unschooled
Life, is available at freechild.info.
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Ask Rue...
