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Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'

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Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'

#4

Post by stretchwithme »

Its not that we think too much of ourselves or too little, but that we think about ourselves too much.

Here the praise is feedback about actual effort made, not about some abstract concept of how great or smart we are. The abstract raise focuses the mind away from the real world towards an abstraction.

Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'

#7

Post by Macphisto »

When my Daughter was born (now three) my wife insisted that I and everyone who has regular contact with her focus on her hard work and not simply say "you're soo smart!". It's tough to make that association but I think I've seen actual results from it. My daughter is about three weeks into ISR swim classes and I can see her shift into her "hard working" face even when she's a little upset or crying. She knows that she has to work hard (show visible effort) at staying calm or calming quickly or trying new things if she wants her reward (her favorite thing in the world: Futurama). It's one of the few developmental guidelines my wife has laid down and I've come around to see it as the most important because to be frank I didn't learn that lesson until WAY too late.

Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'

#8

Post by gxs »

ericd wrote: post #6

The real world doesn't care nearly as much about effort as it does about the end result, except as a mitigation for failure. Why effort and not .2 x effort + .8 x accomplishment?

I think this was the point of the article.

To answer your question, because no matter how smart you are, there will come a time when you HAVE to work extremely hard. If you don't learn this skill early in life, you will suffer simply put.

Re: Once again, praise kids for effort, not for 'smarts'

#10

Post by kmfrk »

brg wrote: post #3

There's an excellent quote from the Korean file "My Sassy Girl" about this. To paraphrase, "Never tell a child he's smart, after a while he'll begin to believe it and start to get lazy."

It's such a shame that people who want to be popular define "smart as"

    smart = results/effort
It gives them an incentive to slack, and while that may work in the lower tiers of the school system, they're going to hit a brick wall at some point, and for many, it will be too late for them to do anything to catch up.

I also recall someone on Quora referring as the distorted picture in places like Stanford described as the "duck syndrome": on the surface, everyone seems to be coasting calmly, but below, they are paddling like mad.

* * *

Praising kids and people can be so friggin' difficult. I remember playing football (soccer) in school, and I was a bit of a geek, but when I played, I would sometimes get all these "compliments": "Nice one, kmfrk!", "You played a great match today" from class mates and the gym class teacher. Most meant well by it - some didn't - but even though I wasn't very old, what was going on was very transparent. (I was a blatantly bad player, except as a goalie, so I took the compliments about my role as the latter more to heart.)

It downright annoyed me, because I knew that I was awful.

It has made it very hard for me to discern actual praise in my life.

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