Mindful Parenting: Reflections on Po Bronson’s “How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The inverse power of praise”
By Meghan McChesney Gilroy
- Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
I love articles that make me re-think how I am parenting. “How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The inverse power of praise” by Po Bronson in New York Magazine is one of them. (Thanks Kira for passing it along!)
In it, Po shares how we can most effectively praise our children. Surprisingly, the way most of us tend to cheer our children on may not result in the self-esteem boost or encouragement we intend. In fact – it might just do the opposite: cause our kids to put in less effort with less results.
I highly recommend reading his article for the details… The short version is: sincere, specific praise on a child’s effort has been proven to be more successful on praising a child on their smarts. In other words, “Good job! I’m proud of you.” and “Aren’t you smart!” just don’t cut it.
I know for myself that when I chirp out “Good job!” without really paying attention to what Bodhi is doing or showing me, it certainly feels hollow. Since he’s a perceptive critter, I know on some level this must also be true for him. So when I take the time to remember what I want to foster in and with Bodhi – connection, creativity, curiosity, inner confidence – and match my praise to my intent, it feels genuine and I see him light up more than when I dole out mindless kudos.
As I was contemplating how to help myself give up my automatic way of praising him (the comments that fall into the “Great job, good work!” category) and move toward the sincere, specific praise on effort category, I remembered the guidelines we used to use when I taught at Inner-City Arts (an amazing non-profit art center for inner-city children in LA).
Instead of telling a child, “I like your drawing,” we would both ask questions and point out what we specifically noticed without giving an opinion. For example, I might say, “I’ve never seen that color before. It looks like you invented a brand new color. What name could you make up for that?” or “I noticed that you used several different shapes in your picture – a triangle, circle, and rectangle.” Or simply, “Tell me more about what you made.”
When we shift to truly paying attention and engaging a child in this way, we are showing that we care. We are inherently praising them without telling them that their work is “good” or “bad.” We are allowing them to determine what works for them creatively, allowing their self-expression to be sufficient in itself, instead of in relation to what the outside world thinks. We’re modeling curiosity. We are letting them develop their ability to communicate about their process. And we were matching our mission at the Center – encouraging connection, creativity, curiosity, inner confidence (as well as language development and a host of others) – that mirror my wishes for Bodhi.
So I’ve developed these guidelines to help me reduce my dependency on the easy praise and increase my usage of the more meaningful ones:
1. Remember my intent: mindfully parenting to foster connection, creativity, curiosity, inner confidence
2. When I catch myself saying, “Good job!” add on a more specific comment at the end.
3. When I notice another adult giving non-specific praise, asking myself to (silently!) come up with a way I could sincerely and specifically praise the child’s effort. (This is a way of practicing for myself – not a way to judge other people.)
4. Stockpiling a few phrases to get me started that focus on effort such as, “I see you really concentrating. That took some (effort/patience/creativity) and you stuck with it. You really listened carefully. I appreciate that you keep trying.”
5. Paying attention and slowing down. If Bodhi calls out “Look at me!” on the playground, I really do look.
6. Using the phase “I am noticing…” or “I see…” followed by a neutral description of his actions. For example, “I see you balancing by carefully placing one foot in front of another.”
7. Asking more questions to Bo: “What are you feeling? Thinking? Noticing?”
At the end of the article, Po writes about his need to praise his child. As anxious modern parents, we want to do the best for our children and often don’t know how. He writes that he has shifted the way he praises his son and yet, “I recognized that praising him with the universal “You’re great-I’m proud of you” was a way I expressed unconditional love… [W]e want them to hear, We are in your corner, we are here for you, we believe in you.”
Perhaps the answer to the dilemma lies in us putting our unconditional love into words: remembering to tell our children that we are in their corner and we are here for them when they’ve done nothing at all or at random moments – just because we do and we can. Then we can also work on shifting our praise to be more conscious, and more effective, and create good vibes for both ourselves and our kids.
Test it out and let me know what you think!
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