Why is praise "toxic"?
This seems to be the opposite problem to what some have where people refuse to acknowledge their children's abilities.
Note the phrase was "hyperbolic praise", probably meaning the "o wow you're a GENIUS you're bound to win a Nobel prize" kind - but I think the more ordinary kind can by toxic too.
In very brief:
- That kind sets up unrealistic expectations and sets the child up for disappointment, or if they see through the hyperbole, for mistrust of what people say in general
- "You're smart" (especially repeated thousands of times by different people) encourages a fixed, not a growth, mindset. ("I succeed because I'm smart; if I fail at something, it will threaten my reality by suggesting I'm not smart after all") There's actually decent research showing [in one experimental setting, blah blah] that telling people they're smart after they've done something makes them less likely to accept a challenge.
- Even the usually approved "you worked so hard at that; I love how you made the grass orange" kind isn't completely innocuous: one can be training one's child to prefer someone else's judgement over their own, and to need someone else's approval of what they do instead of just enjoying it.
The most typical kind of acknowledgement people here want of their children's abilities is the kind that gets them appropriate education, which is very different.
A polemic on this, with discussion of research but not impartial discussion, is Kohn's Punished by Rewards
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htmOn fixed v growth I recommend Dweck's book Self-theories. (This is her "scholarly" book on the subject; there's also the popularising Mindsets, which I haven't read but which others have recommended here.)
http://www.amazon.com/Self-theories-Motivation-Personality-Development-Psychology/dp/1841690244/
