Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion "The Inverse Power of Praise"

Thanks for sharing. It describes so well what I saw with my own kids. I especially liked this quote -

"... those who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized—it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts."

I might print it up and start saving some of these things to give to my kids. This is a nice summary of some reasonable sounding advice. It's something to think about. Hmm., I just wished they linked to that 50 minute video. I'd call that a high recommendation if a fifty minute children's cirriculum based on Carol Dweck's incremental theory was for sale I'd buy it and pass it around.

Here's an old thread about that article:
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/7721/1.html

The right bit of praise at the right time has enormous power.

?????

Clip:
It didn’t take long. The teachers—who hadn’t known which students had been assigned to which workshop—could pick out the students who had been taught that intelligence can be developed. They improved their study habits and grades. In a single semester, Blackwell reversed the students’ longtime trend of decreasing math grades.

The only difference between the control group and the test group were two lessons, a total of 50 minutes spent teaching not math but a single idea: that the brain is a muscle. Giving it a harder workout makes you smarter. That alone improved their math scores.

I looked back at it and it was a 50 minute essay the students read aloud. I don't know why I was thinking it was a fifty minute video they watched. I meant I might start printing up some of these popular articles on how the mind work to share with my kids later... "the human mind, the users manuel".
I think the advice makes sense that letting people know effort counts, effort expands your results, expands your capacity, The advice that letting kids know this increases their resiliency and willingness to stretch their capacity, sounds like practical advice to me.

Of course I'd rather just explain that and show them the article than quit telling my baby "you're the prettiest little princess in the whole wide world. How'd you get so gorgeous?"

My reading tells me that we do NOT know how to raise intelligence, except in unusual situations where know of something specific that is depressing intelligence which can be remediated. Studying math won't make kids smarter, but it will make them better at math, at least up to a point. It's not news that academic achievement is a product of ability and effort.

I prefer not to motivate my children by telling them things I don't believe.

My reading tells me that it is possible raise intelligence to a certain degree with training. With DS6 what I chose to do is simply to discuss Dweck's research and its implications, so he won't "psych" himself out when things get tough. It seems to have worked to a large extent, though he still backslides into perfectionism sometimes. I also discussed the J. Renzulli three ring model with him, emphasizing effort further. (From my phone)

ETA: I'm at my computer now. I just wanted to add that I actually brought up the nature vs. nurture intelligence debate with my son in the course of my discussion with him, and we agreed that for purposes of motivation, it really doesn't matter what's correct in light of Dweck's results. Bostonian, perhaps just explaining the experiment in detail and the results would be enough, as a cautionary tale, without having to claim something in which you don't believe.

I suppose I knew this before I ever read the article, because DD7 has had a phase in the last couple years where she falls apart in occasional challenge situations, and severely doubts her own abilities. Not coincidentally, it began about when the school hung the "gifted" label on her.

DW and I try to praise DD for talent AND effort. With this article in mind, I decided last night to point out how achievement equals talent plus effort, and how talent without effort can accomplish nothing. Her response was "I know..." and an accompanying eye-roll, so I guess we're getting through.

I had the same conversation with my DS9 last night. I got the very same response.
There is no be all end all. It is a balancing act at best.

Sports and group activities of all kinds help us. It equals the playing field IMO.
I have found in the last couple years my son can deal with things better if I am not in the mix. Not that he doesn't struggle at certain things but he picks himself back up on his own. Basketball and baseball are very competitive in our area and you cannot move up without a good bit of effort--and well, talent.

He seems to get it but I see the issues.

I am starting to wonder if I actually went too far with this philosophy of little praise. DD's self esteem seems to be pretty darn low. I'm so used to worrying about the artificially high self esteem and the "Yay, you moved your foot!" stuff that is prevalent now that I wonder if I have been missing this/messing this up for a while. It seems to be a hard balance to strike. I also am not always sure what is genuine negativity about herself and what is "fishing."

IIRC the heart of the matter is how you give positive reinforcement, not that you need to avoid it. Instead of praising a child for being smart, etc. you praise effort, or praise achievement while noting how proud you are of the effort needed to achieve, perhaps specifically noting and appreciating how the child didn't give up at a certain point but was creative about finding a different approach, etc. One thing I've done with DS6 in the past is ask him if he's happy to have surmounted an obstacle (always "yes") and if he's happy to be more capable after learning something new (again always "yes").

Now, if your kid never has to try at anything, that can be hard to do. In that case it's time to up the challenge level.

As a teacher, it's hard to find the balance. You want to encourage each child in the class. This year my goal has been to try and encourage students in a meaningful way. Breaking the habit of saying "You're smart!" has been the hardest. I've had to pinch myself every time I say it. I think after hearing you're smart for so many years the students get an attitude where if it's hard they can give up. I've had a few who were genuinely surprised that I didn't rush to their aid when they commented on hard work.

My new motto is, "I'm glad the work is difficult. When the work is difficult you fail, you try again, and then you learn more."

Maybe I should create a swear-jar type situation where every time I give superficial praise, I put some money in the jar!

Smart idea!

Another thing I've done is model persistence. I've even pushed this with books and films. One of my son's favorite characters is Charles from "The Edge".

Since I think intelligence is largely beyond a person's control, I agree it rarely makes sense to praise a child for being intelligent. But parents should try give children an accurate view of themselves. Since a person's intelligence is relevant when deciding on educational and career options, a parent should try to make an informed estimate of his child's intellect and discuss that estimate at least occasionally. IQ tests and other standardized tests can help a parent estimate a child's intelligence and relative strengths and weaknesses. One reason to send a gifted child to academic gifted summer programs is to help him refine his own estimate of his abilities. He may be clearly be in the top 1%, but interacting with other one-percenters will let him know if he is in the top 0.1% or 0.01% .

Academic competitions should help with this as well.

I remember some math competition thingy I did in middle school, although I can't remember its name.

I guess I agree with Bostonian to a degree. By the time students are ready for this lesson about the brain and its supposed muscle-like qualities, the brain's development has already slowed considerably. In the early years, environmental stimuli and challenges can significantly impact development, but once that window has passed, I'm not inclined to pretend otherwise. These students may be working in an effort to make themselves smarter, but what they are really doing is making themselves more knowledgeable.

Why not be honest about the situation? Knowledge can be very rewarding, and is often a prerequisite for understanding.

My oldest child isn't 3 yet, but when the time comes, I think I'll explain to her that her intelligence is like a multiplier for her effort. Performance = Effort X Intelligence. Since she appears to have a high intelligence, she can manage a mediocre performance with very little effort. However, if she wants to perform at the highest level, considerable effort will be required.

The book "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success" by Carol Dweck talks about this.

After reading that book years ago, I made sure to always praise my dd's effort and hard work rather than inborn talent especially when others try to call her a prodigy or talented. Effort and hard work are things a child can control so praising those can be positive reinforcement. They cannot control their inborn traits so praising those is useless and can lead to perfectionism or avoidance of challenge.
I am also very specific with praise. For example, rather than telling her a performance was wonderful, I will comment on her use of dynamics or how she worked hard to get a certain shift just right or I will comment on how she worked through a difficult math problem.

We are honest with dd about the fact that some things come more easily to her than to other kids but also discuss the fact that different people have different talents and challenges.

Honestly, DD has really never needed to try at anything school-related. Well, unless you count "finishing the damn homework."

I praised the heck out of her when she learned to swim and ride a bike, both of which took really hard work. I praise her art when she works hard on it. I definitely praise kindness and helpfulness.

Bu--school. I tell her I'm proud of her (uniformly excellent) grades, but I wonder if she can tell from my voice that I know it wasn't hard for her to get those grades. Other than that, I guess I don't remark on the work she brings home unless I see a strong piece of writing (not infrequent). She wouldn't really stand for it anyway, I think. If DH says "Good work" to her about her spelling tests, for instance, she says "It's really easy and I didn't even study."

I guess I'm not very clear in the difference between "what 'is' is.". What is the difference between IQ and the understanding of knowledge?  I thought IQ was the capacity to understand. 



 This  nicely said by lucounu, this is what I would have hoped to get out of sharing the (non-existent) video from the article with my kids and some other folks in the neighborhood.  


I'm not sure if intelligence is beyond a person's control.  Intelligence tests are not good at measuring the end of the curve that's where you'd find people willing to play around with it and find out.  I guess we'll never know.  I do know that not everybody wants to be sharper than they are.  Well, that's what they say anyway.

I always appreciated that the teachers in the Montessori classroom would never give praise for a completed work or comment on a child's "smarts". Feedback was intentional so that the child "owned" the accomplishment. "tell me about the blue in your painting" is very different than "what a pretty picture..."

Ha, I tried out that "your brain is a muscle" approach with DS8 on the way to school yesterday. His response: "Mom, your brain is NOT a muscle, it controls all the muscles in your body, but IT isn't a muscle!" So, it didn't work for me! lol Guess I should have stated more clearly that it's an analogy.

We settled on talking about getting synapses firing and "lighting up" your brain by learning new things and taking on challenges. This made more sense to him, but I am not sure that this approach would really affect how he thinks.

LOL. I found that same phrase coming out of my mouth, but I quickly backed off from it. "Well, I mean to say, your brain is LIKE a muscle, in that the more you use it, the stronger it gets..."

It would take less time to teach algebra to an average 12 year old who already knows multiplication, division, and fractions than it would take to teach algebra to a gifted 2 year old, right?

The average 12 year old is better primed to gain that understanding, even though their rate of learning is much lower than that of the gifted 2 year old, and the gifted 2 year old will probably have a deeper understanding of things 20 years down the road.

In the first few years of life, brain development is dependent on stimulation. Exercising your brain at that time can in fact build a better brain. But by the time these kids receive this lesson about the brain being like a muscle, all they can do is prime their brains by working hard to acquire knowledge. All the effort they put in wont raise their IQ, although it can raise their grades.

I'd say IQ is a measure of how quickly and effectively one can build new neural pathways, or re-purpose existing ones, whereas "understanding of knowledge" is the ability to navigate and investigate existing ones.

And this is why effort matters... because the ability to build pathways means nothing if you don't actually build anything with it.

I still don't have this one down - I think I probably have gone too far to the other extreme. I don't really praise my kids or discuss their abilities. While I believe that their self-esteems are intact, their assessments of their abilities are considerably off or at least were last year.

I had both DS8 and DD8 take the SCAT last school year. Both of them did well enough to not only qualified for JHU-CTY, but qualified for the awards ceremony with DS8 qualitfying by a large margin. Anyhow, SCAT has this questionnaire that requests the kids' assessment of their abilities in different subjects. Both my kids chose "average" as the answers to almost all the questions. When I ask DS8 in particular, who had been accelated two years in math, how he could possibly think he was average in math, he said "Oh, yeah -- but, I feel average".

Here they quote the same study, but claim you ARE supposed to make a big deal about how smart the child is for doing so good on the work and then pile on more praise about the effort too. But this summary is from a commercial website. Still, I have to wonder what the study really said.

http://mathrider.com/how-to-motivate-your-child-to-study-and-learn