Solo Mother

The right way to praise a child

by christina on November 9th, 2007

I’m getting to the bottom of our troubles with the King of Everything. It’s a combination of things, beginning with an innocent, but ultimately detrimental, tendency to praise his intelligence and ending with the fact that he’s just not interested in everything he is supposed to be doing at school.

I know what to do about the former, and am working with the school on the latter.

But in one of my favorite blogs, an educator posted a very timely message about some of what the King and I have been struggling with, and she says it ever so much better than I can.

Here is what she had to say, in her own words:

A few weeks ago, I read an article from my October issue of Educational Leadership (article by Carol S. Dweck, Stanford University, author of “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success“) There was article about the wrong and right kind of praise in regards to student motivation. I agreed with what the researcher said.

In a nutshell:

The author writes that educators “commonly hold two beliefs…(1) praising students’ intelligence builds their confidence and motivation to learn and (2) students’ inherent intelligence is the major cause of their achievement in school.” She believes that these beliefs are false and can be harmful.

• Praise is “intricately connected to how students view their intelligence. Some students believe that their intellectual ability is a fixed trait…Students with this fixed mind-set become excessively concerned with how smart they are, seeking tasks that will prove their intelligence and avoiding ones that might not.”
• Other students believe that their intellectual ability is something that they can develop through effort and education…”they don’t necessarily believe that anyone can become an Einstein or a Mozart, but they understand that even Einstein and Mozart had to put in years of effort to become who they were…When students believe that they can develop their intelligence, they focus on doing just that. Not worrying about how smart they will appear, they take on challenges and stick to them.”
• Fundamental aspects of intelligence can be enhanced. Alfred Binet, the inventor of the IQ test, had a strong growth mind-set.
• Students with the fixed mind-set “reject opportunities to learn if they might make mistakes…when they do make mistakes or reveal deficiencies, rather than correct them, they try to hide them.”
• Fixed mind-set students often believe that if you have the ability, you shouldn’t need effort. Also, fixed mind-set students don’t recover well from setbacks and when they do have setbacks, they often decrease their efforts and consider cheating.
• Praising students’ intelligence gives them “a short burst of pride, followed by a long string of negative consequences.” In a study, students of both fixed and growth mind-sets were given both easy and difficult problems. When the students praised for their intelligence did poorly, they lost their confidence and motivation. When asked to report their scores, “almost 40 percent of the intelligence-praised students lied…Only about 10 percent of the effort-praised students saw fit to falsify their results.”
• Suggestions for praise:
  1. You really studied for your English test and your improvement shows it. You read the material over several times, outlined it, and tested yourself. That really worked!
  2. I like the way you tried all kinds of strategies on that math problem until you finally got it.
  3. It was a long, hard assignment, but you stuck to it and got it done. You stayed at your desk, kept on your concentration, and kept working. That’s great!
  4. I liked that you took on that challenging project. You’re going to learn a lot of great things.
• What about the student who works hard and doesn’t do well? Acknowledge their effort and focus on working with the student to figure out what they don’t understand.

While on my morning runs this past week, I’ve thought a lot about this article. I also think about what we as educators are trying to sell to kids, their families and communities…If you stick to this thing called school, it will pay off for you. I’m glad I don’t work for commission because I’d need three jobs to pay my bills. I have kids come into my grade already identifying themselves and each other as “smart” or not. Most of the students I work with have a pretty clear sense of where and what their future holds. And after a decade in the classroom, I’ve learned that 6 and half hours a day x 173 with me can’t alter self-determination and personal circumstances for most of these kids. This doesn’t mean that I stop being a reflective teacher or giving a damn about what they learn and do, but it does give me perspective that their life issues are bigger than I can solve on my own.

I’ve also placed this article in the context of why I’m running again and why I do it, especially if I’m not particularly successful (i.e. a fast/er runner, more competitive) good at it. When I brought in my half-marathon medal to the class a few weeks ago, they really didn’t get why I had a medal if I hadn’t won. Trying to explain that the process of running is what I’m coming to enjoy didn’t make much sense to them. It doesn’t to a lot of adults in my life, either. But it’s that process, of a feeling of a job well done, that is lifting my mood and perspective, especially this past week. As I noted in my exercise journal, this is really the best I’ve felt in a very, very long time.

I have tried to point out to my son the value of the effort he puts into a thing. He doesn’t get it yet, but I do hope that with constant reinforcement, he will come to value the journey more than the end result. I think, that through his overhearing the adults in his life discuss his singular intelligence, and from hearing it directly from us from time to time, he is beginning to believe that intelligence is a given, a thing one has, that requires no effort on his part. If we can’t turn him from this burgeoning mind-set, he’s going to be sorely disappointed when he looks around some day and realizes that intelligence isn’t worth much without hard work, perseverance, and a pioneering spirit of adventure and wonder.

The adults in my child’s life will be able to switch focus from his innate abilities to the effort he puts into flexing his emotional, physical, and mental muscles. I think this will make a big difference in his behavior. I think it will also encourage him to make a greater effort in his homeroom subjects, and begin to apply himself to letter writing, beginning reading, and coloring inside the lines.

When I was serious about pottery, once upon a time, I realized that I had no right to alter the shape of a thing before I had mastered the skills required to form its ideal shape. Bowls had to demonstrate a beauty of proportion, a symmetry of shape, and an evenness of thickness. Only then had I earned the right to break the rules, because only then was I able to fully understand those rules and consciously choose to forgo them.

Same thing with my kid. He must learn how to color inside the lines before he can choose to color outside them.

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