The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids | Hacker News Reader

The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids

nymag.com

57 pointsagrinshtein17 comments

I love this article. Every little failure in school (failing to win first place in a competition, getting a B on a test) made me doubt my talent, and I started losing all belief in my ability when I started taking graduate-level classes in my field. I knew it was irrational and wrong, but for the previous decade of my life, working hard in school had been a reliable sign of a lack of talent. The kids who had a future in a subject breezed by and the kids at the bottom struggled. Now I was working hard, even struggling sometimes. Did I instantly abandon and unlearn a decade of programming? No. It was like the end of The Crying Game in slow motion, three years of discovering that where I thought there was some talent there was, instead, a disgusting, useless lump of flesh.

By the time I got to graduate school I was overwhelmed with a feeling of inevitable failure. I just couldn't stop thinking about failure. Every time I picked up my books I would think about how humiliating it was not to be good enough. I was actually doing acceptably well in my coursework, at one of the top PhD programs in the country, but it became impossible for me to even sit down and study for any length of time because I was so ashamed. I tried to talk myself into a more sensible attitude, but I just couldn't do it.

I have very few memories of the six months I spent living there. I didn't make any friends and can only recall the names of two people I met there: my advisor and one classmate who was friendly toward me. I remember my apartment and the office I shared. (I remember forcing myself to go to the office to study, and I remember sitting there wondering whether the other students could tell how stupid I was just by watching me.) I can remember a few of the places I went -- the zoo, a restaurant where I ate almost every day, a few movie theaters, a used bookstore -- but I don't really remember being there. I didn't use any drugs while I was there and rarely drank (since I had a policy of not drinking alone.) Yet I don't have any memories of specific times or events. I just remember being in my apartment, being at my desk at the office, feeling stupid, miserable, and worthless.

And so I dropped out and got a job in software. That was very lucky for me: I chose it because I thought it didn't require any real intelligence (which I was obviously lacking) but it turned out to be a good way to put my talent to work.

P.S. I normally post under a different name, but this is kind of a whiny sob story, and I'd rather just get it off my chest anonymously.

P.P.S. Now that I think about it, the only reason I remember my advisor's name is that I later saw him interviewed in a PBS documentary about a famous scientist he worked with.

that there's some paranoia you got

Being intelligent as a part of one's identity is not a good idea. I know this from my own experience--I skipped second grade, and was never comfortable in school.

This praise business to me is a subset of what I have come to believe is "raising the kid by remote control". For example, yelling from the other room "I can tell you aren't doing your homework". Far better to sit with the children during homework time, tv off, be available to them, answer any question they want to ask. This is all about them learning to be the pilot in their own life.

This is as important for the father to do as the mother. And yes, this takes time.

I remember reading this when it first came out in 2007, and it's stuck with me ever since. When my boys (now 5yo and 3yo) do accomplish something super cool (riding a bike, catching a ball, learning to swim), I remind them that it was lots of practice that got them there. Praising effort instead of intelligence feels right, but I really, really hope this doesn't turn out to be some quack parental theory that leaves them in rehab for the rest of their lives.

At least the idea was derived from scientific results, not the other way, which makes me a little more comfortable.

some quack parental theory that leaves them in rehab for the rest of their lives

You're doing fine. Try to keep in mind that the notion that minor differences in parental style can send your kids into rehab for life is, itself, the quackiest of quack parental theories.

As Richard Rusczyk (math competitor and now operator of the Art of Problem Solving website) says, "If ever you are by far the best, or the most interested, student in a classroom, then you should find another classroom."

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/AoPS_R_A_Calcul...

He has other good ideas for smart students in his other articles.

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/AoPS_R_Articles...

This research is one of the most fascinating things I've come across in a while: The idea that, regardless of whether there is such a thing as an innate trait of "intelligence", your belief that you are either good at something or not will hurt your performance.

There are many many examples of this. For example, if you give girls math tests and tell them your purpose in giving them the test is to check for gender differences in math performance, the girls do significantly worse than if you tell them nothing.

And it's not just intelligence - this is why sports psychologists can make a living coaching athletes.

Of course when you carry out research like this at school level, you can assume that the material is not impossible to master even for a child of average intelligence. I don't know whether these results hold at the world-class researcher level. Still, the school years provide an important foundation for later life, so it is proper that people look into what affects performance.

I'm not sure I see how that'd work with the really smart children. They can often get their homework done with the fraction of effort required from other kids. Praising the effort will then look ridiculous and seem like a lie. "Oh, I see that you've finished your math homework in 10 minutes. You must have worked really hard on that!"

Then give the children a chance to develop themselves further; more advanced tasks, other variations of the same task, ask them to explain to you how they think when they solve the task, give them something completely different to spend 20 minutes learning/doing, etc.

I highly recommend juggling and balancing (a broom stick on the chin is a personal favourite) - it can be taught easily, requires quite different mental gymnastics and helps generics such as focus and determination. Plus circus is all about collaboration and entertainment, things that are rarely taught outside of a competitive framework in school. Good preparation for the development of an "interesting" personality, but I would say that!

So let them finish their homework in 10 minutes, and then find something that will take the child more than 10 minutes to do. And praise them for working on that. If praising the 10-minute homework effort is ridiculous, then don't do it. Raise the bar. There's got to be something in the whole field of mathematics that would take the kid more than 10 minutes. (General disclaimers apply, I'm sure there are limits to how high you can raise the bar before the kid goes homicidal on you.)

This is absolutely correct. There always has to be more and harder stuff for kids to accomplish. If there's a ceiling, then smart kids will quickly hit the ceiling and then start measuring themselves by how much effort is required to stay there. That's the way it was at my school: all the honors/AP kids learned the same material, and in every class there were at least a couple of kids who got high As on most things. The only way to distinguish yourself was to do it without working hard, because you couldn't distinguish yourself by accomplishing more and harder things.

(despite the elaborate caveat below, thank you for the detailed answer to my question; it seems like a very promising thing to try)

But if you treat the 10-minute homework as something not worthy of praise or mention, the child might feel cheated. Other kids are being praised for much less impressive efforts. I know I'm doing better than most in my class; why is this overlooked? Am I being penalized for my smarts? Perhaps I'm better off making the homework seem like a huge deal, and finishing it in two hours of seemingly herculean effort?

The parent may think it right to raise the bar as far as the child's aptitude allows, but the child won't necessarily feel this policy to be fair. And most children are naturally apt at gaming parental policies.

...or, praise them for working hard in a subject where they aren't talented enough to whip through the homework in ten minutes. If the kid is razor-sharp in math but merely above-average in reading, then their efforts in reading are the ones that particularly need encouragement.

Perhaps if the original title were used, it would have been more obvious that this was submitted over two years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=640

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