This doesn't mean only being proud of themselves when they come in first place. We should teach them to seek out self-approval, being proud of an accomplishment when they know they put in all the effort they could. When we tell our kids we're proud of them, we train them to seek out our approval. Instead of falling back on the old "I'm so proud of you" try one of these alternatives. It can also focus them on hard work and effort as opposed to innate smarts. There is praise we can offer in the right circumstances that can point kids inward. We want kids to be intrinsically motivated, working to achieve their best because they want to. These aren't bad desires, but raising kids who constantly reach for external praise, especially if we offer it when they don't do anything extraordinary, is a bad idea. We want to tell our kids how well they are doing, and we want them to feel valued. The hardest part about this information is that parents, especially in the Western world, are primed to praise. Though research points out that there may also be a genetic link to narcissism, children who are already predisposed and grow up with parents who constantly overestimate their worth and abilities stand a higher chance of turning into narcissists. Besides encouraging our kids to give up when things get hard, it also gives them inflated egos and may cause them to become narcissists later in life. ![]() More recent research has gone even further in proving that overpraising is a big mistake. They veer away from anything that takes effort. Kids who are overpraised and labeled as naturally smart are actually less likely to take on challenging tasks. Contrary to what many parents think, the impact is not positive.Īuthors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman share the negative impacts of overpraising kids in their book " NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children." They emphasize the importance of praising a child's sincere effort and improvement on a task as opposed to labeling them as smart and throwing praise at everything they do. We praise our kids for everything they do – broad praise that actually means little but has a major impact. It's built into the way most of us parent.
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