“You’re so smart!” Believe it or not, that phrase can cause dire consequences.
Hearing this phrase instills fear the first time your child has difficulty completing a project or solving a problem.
It may sound crazy but praising your child for intelligence can keep him from sticking with projects that require brainpower and tenacity to get through them.
When our older daughter was in fourth grade, we got first-hand experience of our child lacking the self-confidence necessary to work through situations that needed extra effort. And it took us a while to figure out that calling her smart had shaken her confidence.
When a project didn’t come easy for her, instead of analyzing and planning strategies to figure it out, she wondered if people had been wrong about her intelligence. She felt uncomfortable coming up with ideas to try, in case they didn’t work—proof that she wasn’t as smart as people seemed to think.
“This is a stupid project,” she would say and then quit working on the activity.
But on the inside, she thought she was the stupid one. If she were smart like people said, she would know what to do.
After crunching data from six case studies, Carol Dweck and Claudia Mueller from Columbia University conclude, “Fifth graders praised for intelligence…displayed less task persistence, less task enjoyment, and…worse task performance than children praised for effort.”
Dweck’s and Mueller’s findings came out way back in 1998, but I didn’t do all the studying about this stuff that I do now. Since then, their conclusions have been reinforced many times by other researchers.
But like so many issues while raising children, my husband and I learned how to help our daughter believe she could problem solve through trial and often painful error—which I’ll help you avoid if you keep reading.
At first, we tried consequences for not finishing a project, which was a total failure. She felt extra pressure knowing she’d miss computer time for quitting a project before it was finished. She became defiant and disrespectful, and even more reluctant to try something else once her initial attempt to work through an obstacle failed.
Little by little, my husband and I learned to praise our daughter for baby steps in moving forward, and ease her into reaching a desired goal.
Once we started to get the hang of how to support her in finishing a challenging activity, our conversations went something like this:
Me: “I like how you folded that paper into an airplane.”
Her: “Yeah, well, it didn’t fly very far. This is dumb.”
Me: “Hey, you tried something. That was a great start. Sometimes it takes a while to find answers. What could you try next?”
Her: “I don’t know how else to fold the paper to make a better airplane.”
Me: “Could you go back to your teacher’s directions for the project to see if another idea, maybe something besides a paper airplane, occurs to you?”
Her: “I guess, but I don’t really want to.”
Me: “Yeah, I don’t blame you. But if you read it again an idea might come to you. Can you read it out loud? Sometimes hearing the directions while reading them helps.”
I praised her for reading the directions again. I praised her idea to look up paper airplanes online. I praised her for for reading and following the directions to make different models of folded airplanes. (Even better, she had a lot of fun showing other kids how to make those airplanes later.)
These days our daughter is a software engineer who specializes in working out daunting programming problems every day.
To further illustrate how praising effort rather than intelligence is the hot ticket for confidence and competence building, a parent wrote in a review for Brain Stages on Amazon wrote:
“This [parenting] book is the first one that has actually impressed me…I’ve already found a lot of good information and advice and have implemented them successfully. For example, there’s a part that emphasizes that when you’re doing homework with your child, it’s important not to say things like ‘you’re so smart!’ when they get something right.
‘I’ll admit I was guilty of that, and it showed. Just as the book said, saying things like that can lead the child to become upset and make them feel like they’re not smart as soon as they run into a tough problem.
“Instead, the authors say to focus on how the child worked hard to solve the problem and to comment on that instead. As soon as I started saying things like ‘I really like how you stayed focused and solved that problem!’ I found that my son was getting less frustrated during homework sessions.”
[A big THANK YOU to that parent for writing a review! If you can steal a minute to write a quick review for Brain Stages, I would greatly appreciate it. You’ll need your Amazon username and password to sign in. Here’s the link.]
Below, I have distilled the elements of the kind of encouragement I found most effective with our own children as well as hundreds of students over the years, to help them develop confidence and competence.
3 Keys to Effective Praise that will Help Your Child Thrive
- Be specific.
Compliment your child for a positive action—for example, the effort that went into something he tried, even if it didn’t work. Each time he puts forth effort, he’s one step closer to finding a solution. My sister-in-law always says, “Anything worth doing is worth being lousy at it at first.”
- Acknowledge tenacity.
Compliment your child for sticking with projects, along the way as well as through completion. Again, be specific.
Examples:
-Acknowledge her for following directions, keeping at a project that takes longer than expected, or rereading the directions when things don’t seem to be working.
-Offer praise when your child spends time to figure out a game plan to do an activity or reach a goal rather than just trying random things.
-Give props when she tries to look at something in a different way if her first attempt fails, rather than giving up.
- Give praise for interesting ideas.
Appreciating your child’s imaginary scenarios, no matter how silly or wild, will boost his confidence and encourage creative thinking when working through obstacles while working toward a goal.
If you haven’t made the mistake of telling your child how smart he is, you likely have confirmation that you’ve been on the right track. Hopefully you’ve also learned more tools to build your child’s confidence and help him thrive.
If you’ve already shaken your child’s confidence by gushing about how smart she is, like we did, don’t worry. Now that you know how to compliment your child in an empowering way, you can begin giving specific compliments today and see positive change almost immediately.
If you found this post helpful, you have a copy of Brain Stages, and you haven’t written a review yet, please take a minute to write a short review on Amazon. We’d be so grateful!
Here’s the link to write a review.
And pass this post along to your friends!
Here’s to having fun on your parenting journey while you raise super successful, well-adjusted kids!
Trish Wilkinson
Coauthor Brain Stages: How to Raise Smart, Confident Kids and Have Fun Doing It
Thanks, hope it helps your family or someone you know. 🙂