those mistakes, provided parents don’t get too involved.
The Difference Between Praise and
Encouragement
Every parent wants their child to develop a positive self-image, and every
parent knows that a positive self-image is related to feeling good about
accomplishments. Understandably, parents concentrate on evaluating a
child’s job and want their child to feel good about what he or she has
done. The easiest and perhaps most natural thing is to praise the child in
the belief or hope that the child will accept praise and feel great about
himself.
Some parents view praise as so important that even when their child
does a bad job, they still make the assumption that praise is called for.
For example, we saw a father in a park watching his son fly a model
airplane, and although the plane would crash with great frequency after
increasingly short flights, the father would exclaim with feigned joy,
“What a great flight!” We watched his child’s expression, and there was
no doubt he wondered,
• Is Dad blind?
• Is Dad lying?
• Doesn’t poor Dad know what a good flight is?
• Does Dad think I’m blind?
• Does Dad think I need his response?In the end, false praise almost always leads to disrespect.
Love and Logic teaches that effective praise is built on two
assumptions:
- The evaluator and those evaluated have a good relationship or at
least mutual respect.