Praise and encouragement. Powerful tools for building self-esteem.

Starting from infancy, parents lavish praise on their children by smiling, clapping and using words of praise such as “Good job!” Praise is a powerful tool for developing a child’s self image and ensures that a behavior will be repeated. Praise motivates a child to repeat the behavior and encourages a child to continue working to achieve that praise.

Hmmm, have we created praise junkies? Let’s consider this common example. Amy brought home a watercolor painting from school. Mom heaps praise on Amy. It’s great! “I love it.” “Let’s put in on the refrigerator.” “ Let’s take a picture of it and text it to Grandma.”

Amy beams and feels proud and happy. A few days later, Amy comes home with another watercolor with high expectations for praise. Only today, Mom is thinking about a problem she is having at work or she has fifteen minutes to give Amy lunch before she has to rush to take Amy’s little brother to the pediatrician. So mom puts the painting aside with minimal attention. Amy is confused.

She thinks…. ”Why was that painting so much better?” ”Did I use more yellow?” ”Doesn’t Mommy like this one because I made my name messy?” Amy is disappointed in herself. We must remember that a child of that age is Self-centered and everything she sees and thinks and does is all about her. A child of four does not have the insight or empathy to think that Mom has something else on her mind or something else that she must do.

Does this mean that we don’t praise a child? Of course not. Praise is crucial in developing a feeling of satisfaction with one’s self and the development of self-worth. But how we praise and encourage can be tweaked to having the child develop a feeling of self-satisfaction rather than having self-esteem based upon someone else’s opinion of their work, achievements, and actions?

When praising a child, we can take our judgements out of the equation. For example, Amy comes home with a painting. Mom asks, “Tell me about it. “ Amy answers with whatever means most to her. “I liked using lots of yellow paint today.” Or “I was painting next to Grace.” Or “ Can we put this on the refrigerator?” Mom answers, “I can see that you feel good about making this painting.” Or “ Did you have fun making this painting?” “ I love seeing that you keep working on your art at school.” Thus, the focus of pleasing mom is shifted to self-satisfaction. The shift from praise focus to helping a child develop self-satisfaction is subtle and difficult to accomplish. It’s also counter-intuitive. As parents, we want to praise and cheer and show them how much they are loved. We want to let them know that they are loved unconditionally and that we are always proud of them regardless of outcomes of soccer games or test grades or awards and recognition. So we can keep that message separate from praise and say….. “I love you!” “I will always be proud of you.” “I love that you are willing to try new things.” “You are very special to me.”

Joy Frost