Is Our Country’s Biggest Problem Really That We Praise Our Kids Too Much?
Saying ‘good job’ on the playground will NOT turn your toddler into Ted Bundy.
Apparently, this country is suffering from a serious problem right now: We’re being far too nice to our children.
Here are some headlines from the last 12 months:
“The problem with praising your kids TOO much” — Psych Central, February 2019
“Why Telling Your Children They Are Smart Could Turn Them Into Cheaters” — Forbes, November, 2018
“When saying ‘Good Job’ is a bad thing” — Montessori Musings, October 2018
“Why I’ll never cheer for my son” — The Week, June 2018
“Stop Praising Kids with ‘Good Job!’ How ineffectively praising kids can hurt more than help” — From a popular kids’ sports blog, May 2018
“Are our children overpraised?” — Child Mind Institute, May 2018
These follow headlines from a few years earlier such as “Do Parents Nurture Narcissists By Pouring On The Praise?” from NPR, “How over-praised children turn into arrogant adults,” from the UK Daily Mail, “Praising kids: ‘Good job!’ Doesn’t cut it anymore” from Psychology Today, and “Is praising your children good or bad for them?” from the BBC.
The spate of stories started, it seems, with a Dutch study of 565 kids ages 7–11, published in 2015, that concluded that, according to Scientific American, “children of excessively praising parents were more likely to score high on narcissistic qualities but not on self-esteem.”
The upshot, the stories say, is that while praising specific accomplishments may help nurture a child’s self-esteem, telling him he’s special or giving vague or undeserved praise may simply inflate his ego.
But it’s unclear how often parents really go overboard, and until what age the tone of the praise matters more than the words. Having seen quite a number of anti-“Good job!” posts on parenting blogs in just the last year or two, I wonder if people…
