Parents and teachers are often reminded that adult praise of the child is helpful for the child's self-esteem and achievement, but this may be an oversimplification. What styles of praise are helpful, and what styles may be counterproductive?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

At some schools, children are encouraged to chant meaningless slogans such as, "I'm the greatest!" or "I can achieve anything.". The goal of these chants is to boost the child's self-esteem, yet this activity is meaningless because the child knows that it refers to no concrete achievements and does not refer specifically to him or her. For self-esteem, the child should be encouraged to identify areas of high interest and good ability, which can be strengthened to earn genuine praise. For example, if a child is interested in sports and has moderate ability, this ability could be enhanced with parental support and sports involvement. Effective praise would then be based on the child's actual achievement on the sports field. For other achievements, praise should be focused on the child's efforts toward finding solutions. This type of praise is called process-oriented praise ("You worked hard and developed a good strategy"), and it supports learning goals and the mastery orientation to achievement. Mastery should be promoted because it characterizes high achievers at all ages. Person-praise ("You are smart") should be avoided because it leads the child to seek trivial "performance goals" merely to impress the adult that the person-praise was justified.