I was recently asked what the problem was with praise. I was talking with a mother whose child struggles with picky eating, and she had been told to avoid praising her daughter for trying new foods.
Her question was, why?
Some parenting experts talk about praise as though it’s going to damage your child. You’ll ruin their intrinsic motivation! They will only do good things if they think you’ll see! You’re hampering their creativity! They’ll become praise junkies! Instead, they provide scripts for ways to replace praise, yet these comments often feel clunky and, well, scripted.
Here’s the thing.
Saying “good job” is certainly not the best thing we could be saying to our children. Alfie Kohn sums up the evidence against praise in his book Punished by Rewards, indicating that praise disrupts performance, decreases task persistence, leads to the avoidance of difficult tasks, undermines intrinsic motivation, and leads to a desire for external approval.
But it’s also far from the worst thing we could be saying to our children. You can let a “good job” slip out without washing your mouth out with soap afterwards. You don’t need to stay up late at night worrying about the way you’ve irreversibly damaged your child by praising them. You don’t need to put praise alternatives on flashcards to memorise them. Yes, praise has negative effects. Yet these effects are generally small and are far less damaging than the impact of constant criticism.
Here’s something else that is true.
You can improve on “good job”.
To again reference Alfie Kohn, I quote:
“Praise is cheap and easy.”
Saying “good job”, “great work”, or “well done” takes no thought and no effort. These comments don’t say anything meaningful to our child. What we’re aiming for instead is positive feedback and encouragement. If you’re not sure what that looks like in practice, here are four ideas to get you started:
- Say what you see. (You ran so fast and you finished the race in second place!)
- Reinforce their own opinion. (How do you feel about your recital? … I’m proud of you too.)
- Ask questions. (That’s a big building, can you tell me more about how you made it?)
- Express gratitude. (Thank you so much for helping with the tidying up!)
These things say more to our child than good job does. They say that we noticed the effort and process, not just the outcome and achievement. They say that we care more about their evaluation of what happened than our evaluation, and that they should care more about their own opinion than what others think too. They say that we’re interested enough in what they’ve done to notice the details. They say that we’re grateful for the positive impact they are having on our lives.
In short, the problem with praise isn’t so much that it’s a problem. Its that we can do so much better.
I'd love to hear your thoughts! What’s your most meaningful “good job” alternative?
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