Kevin D. Hendricks

Praise Kids’ Effort, Not Intelligence

I’m not a big fan of parenting advice. There are so many theories and ideas and ways to do it that if you change your style with every article or book you read you’ll be schizophrenic. Plus my wife is practically a specialist in child behavior, so I just ask her (plus she explains why something works, which helps me so much more than ‘just do this’).

But despite my tendency to ignore parenting articles, I found this article in the New York Magazine, How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The Inverse Power of Praise, incredibly fascinating (well-written and insightful!). It basically says that heaping general praise on your kids can do more harm than good. Kids who are told they’re smart end up relying on their sense of how intelligent they are instead on their ability to try. On the flip side, kids who are praised for their effort learn to keep trying and that effort trumps intelligence.

This is paired with a study that shows students who are taught their intelligence can increase do better in school. It used to be that people thought your brain stopped growing in adulthood. That’s why losing brain cells is bad–once they’re gone, they’re gone. But apparently your brain does keep growing as you get older. It’s like a muscle: the more you use it, the stronger it gets. Simply by putting forth effort and flexing your noodle, you can be smarter. That alone is motivation for a C student to try harder.

The effort is what’s important, not the innate intelligence. It has an interesting application to parenting, specific praise is supposed to be better–it helps kids understand that continued effort can help them succeed, and helps them learn specific strategies that worked (it’s not that I’m smart, it’s that I studied for two hours; it’s not that I played a good game, it’s that I hustled for the ball). I imagine it has similar applications to the workplace and management: specific praise is probably a better motivator then a general ‘good job everybody.’

I’ll have to talk to the resident expert in the house, but it makes sense to me. It comes down to a work ethic. Being smart doesn’t give you any advantages if it’s also taught you to be lazy.