“Good Job!”
“That’s beautiful!”
“I love your drawing!”
Sometimes these sentences are out of my mouth before I can even think. I slap myself on the cheek to remind myself: it’s not about me.
Why, you ask? We say these things deeply and emphatically, with the best of intentions. We want children to feel encouraged, loved, and supported by us. We want children to be happy and know that we are paying attention. We want children to know when their behavior is exceptional, and we reward them for it, with the praise of our words or with things they enjoy.
Unexpectedly, the very things that we try to accomplish with praise or reward are the very things we end up extinguishing: pride and motivation.
There are a number of resources out there on why praise and reward have actually been scientifically shown to demotivate children. When children are rewarded or praised for good behavior, then they begin to seek the praise rather than the intrinsic reward of feeling personally successful about their own activity. The reality of praise and reward is that it takes the child’s personal action and satisfaction and makes it about the adult instead. Instead of saying “how do YOU feel about your success?” we end up saying “here’s how I feel about your success.” The child’s focus is instantly shifted from an internal sense of accomplishment to our approval (or disapproval) of the accomplishment. We put ourselves in the way of the child’s relationship with his inner self, and in trying to create a sense of self-esteem, we undermine it.
Alfie Kohn, a leading figure in progressive education who writes about parenting and child development, can give you five [important] reasons to stop saying “Good Job!” and they are wonderful reasons. Besides the idea that children become addicted to praise, now doing activities solely for the sake of praise rather than their own desire to succeed, there is also plenty of evidence to show that praised and rewarded children are less motivated to achieve and less likely to challenge themselves. The result is almost always a dramatic loss of interest and a lower level of achievement.
One great study done on praise was highlighted in the book NurtureShock (honestly, a must-read for anyone who wants to know anything about children). Citing Stanford University’s Carol Dweck’s research, the book discusses how children are demotivated by praised. To sum it up, Dweck gives fifth graders very simple puzzles to solve. After successfully solving them, the team praises one group for their intelligence and the other group for their effort. When they bring the children back, they offer the children either a harder puzzle from which they would learn a lot from or a puzzle that was just as easy as the first one. The result: 90% of children praised for their effort chose the harder one, while the majority of the “smart” kids picked the easy one.
If you find yourself compelled towards praise, you are not alone; research suggests 85 percent of American parents believe it's important to tell their kids they're smart and to praise them for their intelligence. You may not even notice that you are doing it, compelled by a natural societal inclination towards praising and rewarding. What is praise exactly? It’s every time you insert judgment about something your child has done: telling the child that his drawing is “beautiful,” telling your child that she did something “good,” or qualifying your child in any way such as “best,” “smart,” “beautiful” etc. What is reward exactly? It’s every time you see your child do something well and give something unsolicited because you liked the outcome. The key word here is outcome. When we focus on and define outcomes as good or bad, our children become reliant on our opinions. Now, if they don’t hear that a drawing was beautiful or that they did a good job, they begin to wonder whether or not is was.
By creating the reliance on our judgment and focus on outcomes, we create situations where children can no longer reflect on their own beliefs about their actions, thus ruining the very concept of self-esteem we thought we were creating. Uncertain about whether or not they will be praised, children begin to stop trying harder, becoming less motivated. In that manner, they become even more reliant on praise and reward, inevitably requiring it in order to succeed or not making attempts to succeed, too afraid they’ll fail and not receive the praise. After years of stickers and grades and praise in school, children eventually become demotivated to learn. In fact, the very reason we often find ourselves bribing high school students to get good grades is because of the very nature of the reward and judgment system.
Dr. Montessori was always against praise (in this instance, being a type of prize), seeing at the youngest of ages that it caused nothing but demotivation. She wrote “prizes and punishments are, if I may be allowed the expression, the bench of the soul, the instrument of slavery for the spirit. Here, however, these are not applied to lessen deformities, but to provoke them. The prize and the punishment are incentives toward unnatural or forced effort, and, therefore we certainly cannot speak of the natural development of the child in connection with them. The jockey offers a piece of sugar to his horse before jumping into the saddle, the coachman beats his horse that he may respond to the signs given by the reins; and, yet, neither of these runs so superbly as the free horse of the plains.”
So what is a parent to do?
In my opinion, all this philosophy and thought means we have to focus on two things: our children’s efforts and how they feel about their efforts. We have to take ourselves out of the equation. The truth is, we can participate in their achievements and triumphs without making it about how we feel.
Facts are facts. When our children make achievements, there is nothing wrong with pointing them out. My favorite phrase, the one I have replaced “good job” with is: “you did it!” There is nothing qualifying in my statement, I’m not saying it’s good or bad. And now, whether or not I’m in the room, my son can be heard yelling “I did it!” when he accomplishes something. The same can be said for artwork, for example. When we see our child’s drawing, we don’t have to decide if the art is good or bad. We can simply describe what we see (“Oh, it’s a boat” or “Oh, that’s a lot of colors”) or we can ask questions to signify our interest, which is what they really want anyway (“What is this? Can you tell me a story about it?).
Encourage! The thing to focus on is effort. Instead of focusing on the outcome, let’s focus on the task. This way, children can see what they really accomplished and be motivated towards challenging themselves. We just need point out how difficult or complex the task was that they achieved (“wow, you’ve never done that before, that was hard!” or “oh my goodness, it’s not easy to do that, you must have worked hard at that!” or “you really challenged yourself!). Even if they aren’t successful at it, but still challenging themselves, we should point out the braveness of their attempt (“you almost got it, wow, you tried hard this time!”).
Talk about THEIR feelings. We don’t have to be the proud ones…they should be. Let’s give them the language to talk about how they feel about their efforts.
“How did it feel to do that?”
“Was that frustrating?”
“I bet you are really proud of yourself!”
Just smile. We can participate without words. We can be a part of their success with just a show that we know how they are feeling and that we were there to witness it.
When you get it wrong, which you will sometimes, follow up with the right stuff. I know all this information and “good job” still flies out of my mouth. I slap myself gently on the face. And then I get it right and say what I should have said. The more I do that, the less I find myself praising off the bat.
So let’s all go out there and encourage those kids! I know you'll work hard at it!
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