Encouragement Over Praise

One of my favorite parenting resources is Positive Parenting Solutions, created by Amy McCready.  It’s a program designed to help us communicate and relate to our children in a positive, peaceful, and effective way.  And one of the most impactful things I’ve learned is the difference between encouragement and praise.

I think one of the most natural instincts we have as parents is to lavish our kids with praise.  “You’re fantastic at soccer!” “You’re a wonderful artist!” “You’re soooo smart, you little genius.”  It feels right to tell them these things, because we mean them! They are so cute and amazing!  If I followed my natural instincts and communicated my actual thoughts, my kids would be overwhelmed with praise.  And even though I feel like they deserve it, I’ve learned that it may not be the healthiest thing for them.

Simply put, praise rewards an outcome, while encouragement rewards the endeavor.  And the difference is meaningful.  If we tell our kids over and over that they’re smart after they get a good grade, they’ll learn to associate the good outcome with their intelligence.  So what happens if they don’t do well on a test?  The natural thought they’ll have is “well maybe I’m not so smart after all,” or “maybe I’m just no good at that subject.”  Ultimately, excessive praise can impose a fear of failure.  And this makes sense.  If our kids become praise junkies based on performing well, they’ll be fearful of failing and losing that label of “smart” or “athletic.”  But if we instead use encouraging feedback like “wow you must have really worked hard,” or “your practice is really making a difference,” the reward won’t be the score, but instead the learning process.  Our kids will be less scared to fail, because the reward isn’t in the outcome.  Instead, they’ll be more likely to pick themselves up and try again.

We also don’t want our children to be doing things because they’re seeking praise, right?  We want them doing things because they like to do them!  Instead of creating art just to hear us say how amazing it is, we want to cultivate little artists who feel rewarded by the creative process.  Plus, being on the praise circuit creates pressure not just for our kids, but for us!  If we condition our kids to constantly come to us for validation, we’re not just hinging their confidence on our words of admiration, but also creating a system where we better be ready to approve and compliment everything our kids do, create and say.  That’s too much pressure for everyone. 

Also, in the long run, we definitely don’t want our kids’ confidence to be linked to validation from anyone.  As our kids grow up, they’re going to start getting a lot more feedback from their peers.  Kids are opinionated little beings, and most of the time they don’t seem to have any issue sharing those opinions.  If we’ve raised our kids to find their confidence, not from within, but from our opinions of them, we risk having kids who find their confidence in what their peers think of them.  That’s very scary for obvious reasons, particularly in this era of social media, which already places an enormous amount of pressure on young people (actually, everyone!) to live up to unrealistic standards and images of perfection.  The last thing we want is to have contributed to our child’s need to garner praise from others. 

So, how do we encourage instead of praise our kids?  I love something Amy McCready says, which is that encouragement is “about the doer, not the deed.”  So, instead of saying something like “wow that’s an awesome drawing,” the feedback could be something like “you must be so proud of yourself!” or “it seems like you worked really hard on that!”  And instead of simple praise that lacks focus, like “wow that’s beautiful,” you can start a conversation:  “I see you chose yellow to color that whale! Tell me about that!”  Encouragement creates more engagement, which is really what we’re after in our relationships with our kids.

Ultimately, it’s not realistic that we’re never going to praise our kids.  Let’s be honest.  Sometimes we just have to tell them how cute they are.  Or that they’re amazing.  And that’s ok!  I don’t think anyone, including Amy McCready or any child development expert, would expect otherwise.  I think the point is to try our best to cultivate an internal well of motivation and confidence that our children can draw upon instead of relying on an outside source.  After all, there’s a lot of world changing to do, and we want to equip them to do it.