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[lenadances]

The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
Hint: Don't tell your kids that they are. More than three decades of research shows that a focus on effort-not on intelligence or ability-is key to success in school and in life
By Carol S. Dweck A brilliant student, Jonathan sailed through grade school. He completed his assignments easily and routinely earned As.

Comments

[kellychenault]

Interesting article. I do feel that overpraising your children in order to boost their self-esteem is counter-productive. If anything, I think I tend to be harder on Zach than most parents would be, and probably more than I should be. But I don't want him to think that half-assed is good enough, and he's such a compliment hog. I hate to feed in to it. He constantly wants praise and affirmation, to the point where it's one of the behavior problems that the social worker at school is working on.

But that aside, the article has given me some good ideas. When I do praise Zach for a job well done, I'll make sure to praise the effort that went in to it. That does seem like a logical approach.

[in_the_sea]

That sounds exactly like Mom and Dad's strategy.

[lenadances]

I have the feeling that was one of those things that they didn't get quite right on the test-run. Let's just say that when I was eight, it was difficult to distinguish that Dad yelling at me was about how I'd screwed up, not about the fact that I'd done poorly in the first place. By the time I was old enough to finesse that concept, I was pretty set in being terrified of failure.

It seems to have worked okay on you, though. So, yay.

[in_the_sea]

Honestly, sometimes it seems like we had totally different parents