> When a child comes home excited with a great mark, say, “you deserve it! You worked really hard for that mark.
Ok, putting aside it's important to be emotionally warm towards your children and ensure they understand you love them "unconditionally"[1], I do think it's also important to help them to learn retrospect and to work smarter.
"What a great mark you've earned! What do you think was working about your approach?" (then praise and encourage them for whatever they say so long as it's remotely reasonable). I just say this because I feel like the "work hard" mentality actually hasnt served me in life. Once you work for a business no one cares how "hard" you work, if it's not smart first. Smart is the more powerful variable, you can work Smart and not hard and be quite successful. But work hard on stupid things? No one cares and you'll be overlooked and even hated on at times.
[1] - I'm not a parent, but honestly everyone has a limit, and frankly love should not be truly impossible to lose. My love will stop if they butcher my wife, burn down my house, and call me fat.
I'd be pretty annoyed, as a child or not, if at every turn I'd be asked to retrospect about an accomplishment or even a failure.
Praising children for hard work rather than "for just being smart" is about their own personal wellbeing. Kids who get called smart in their early years have trouble facing real and difficult problems later in life, because they suddenly feel "wait, I'm not really smart" and other such pathological feelings. It's about encouraging problem solving, not just blindly working hard, and teaching that problem solving is a continually evolving process and not some innate thing that you either have or don't have.
It's true that the real world doesn't recognize hard work in a consistent way, but I think this is more about personal development and wellbeing rather than implying hard work will make you successful, for some definition of successful.
> I'd be pretty annoyed, as a child or not, if at every turn I'd be asked to retrospect about an accomplishment or even a failure.
Perhaps like: "I wanted you to celebrate/commiserate this emotional thing with me but instead you're always ruining it by trying to make it some kind of school thing--what the fudge, Dad..."
> I'd be pretty annoyed, as a child or not, if at every turn I'd be asked to retrospect about an accomplishment or even a failure.
I’m the complete opposite. I might be irritated if people made me relive a sore defeat too soon, but I love “stewing” in the victories.
If people ask me “amazing win man, how’d you do it?”, I’d revel in retelling the story, especially if I took a shot and was clever. “They all said my way wouldn’t work but I showed them”
Ha, and I’m the opposite in a different direction. I _hate_ positive feedback. What motivates me is failure and a fear of failure. I go out of my way to downplay accomplishments but will talk your ear off about how and why I failed or almost failed or knew about a failure condition.
Maybe the actual takeaway is to figure out what kind of feedback a child responds best to and use that most of the time. You know, paying attention to the kid.
Congratulations on the mark. I'm sorry we subjected you to such an inhuman peer ranking activity. Society has become so psychotic that it's impossible for us to understand anything unless we quantify it and this is your initiation.
>I'd be pretty annoyed, as a child or not, if at every turn I'd be asked to retrospect about an accomplishment or even a failure.
I meant what I wrote more in the spirit of "Great Job! Teach me whats been working well ? :) " A curious, open approach that they get to highlight what they're proud of or think is praise worthy.
As opposed to "Great Job, now let's go over the replay reel with a fine tooth comb to analyze it" ... I think I meant it much more casual and friendly than perhaps it read?
I mean, would you? It is literally a defining capability for high level performance. Take a breather, enjoy success, but then look at it.
Though, make no mistake, there is a ton of variability in kids. I think I could reasonably do this with one kid, but I couldn't with another. And some kids need pressing, some don't seem to.
A problem with this kind of statement is that it doesn’t take into account that you live with a child pretty much 100% of the time. It’s not like any other personal relationship, especially in the early days. Having a child is intense, and most people without kids simply don’t have the experience to fully appreciate how relentless it is.
I write this simply to say that there is plenty of time to praise kids, and plenty of time to coach them. You don’t need to do both, at once, all the time. Ride the highs, survive the lows; the in-between times are there to teach and learn.
I work with and around a lot of really smart people, including for my job. I have a very intimate relationship with the very smartest of those people. I get to see behind the curtain quite a bit. The top 10% have no idea how hard the top 1% work. Many think the top 1% are coasting because everything is so easy for them. I fall into that trap myself a lot. The truth is that most real results take time consuming work.
I once had a conversation with somebody who lost their bid for a networking job to some 18-year old kid who "probably just plays a lot of video games." They never saw the 1000 hours the kid had spent the last two years fighting for better network latency. They didn't know the kid could quote two dozen different RFCs and could give you the strengths and weaknesses of 6 different routing protocols.
Which candidate was "smarter"? I have no idea. I know which one had spent more hours preparing for the job. Even if their competition thought they were just playing around all hours of the day and night.
That's one of the annoying realities I am slowly having to face.
Among highly technical ICs, the people who are paid $500k/year often do tend to work 2x the people who get paid $200k. Sure, these people are also more efficient, more effective and more knowledgeable. But, most of all, they work some insane hours. It's incredible, they are thinking about work when they're eating, sleeping, on vacation...it's like an obsession.
I am in one such ~60 hrs/week job right now, and everyone in an IC role that's paid more than me, works more hours than I do. Yeah, my (supposed) compensation went up with this job hop, but in IC roles, hourly rates stay the same.
I love my work & my top 1% coworkers. But man, I look at the ones who are 10 years older than me, and that is not the kind of life I want to be living. I know a person who made millions before 25, and this person had never so much as taken a real vacation, watched a random TV show or played a computer game, despite always having the financial capacity to do so. I am not sure if there is dollar value for which I would give up those precious moments from my teens and 20s.
In the psychological research on domain expertise and performance, a common observation is that while greater expertise/performance is generally recognized to be the result of greater effort, people at lower levels vastly underestimate just how much greater effort.
Figuring out an eloquent solution to get work done faster and at higher quality is both smart and hard. It means taking the time to stop and think ahead, while also applying brain power to the problem.
The idea of avoiding rewarding ability is that we know it leads to smart kids who never learn how to put forth large amounts of effort, since often times up until college school is so bloody easy, they can skate by w/o developing good study habits.
Celebrating a milestone (birthday, graduating, completing a goal) and celebrating qualities that helped reach that milestone are two different things, in my mind.
"Did a good job" is a perfectly adequate milestone to celebrate. Adding qualifiers only introduces the idea of limits, imho. There's no point in setting the bar for someone with unknown potential.
The metric for intelligence has been the ability to retain information, and show such ability by regurgitating memorized data.
The metric became the target, and the regurgitated data became the goal, and not the memorization or rationalization that was intended. Data over substance, and recognition.
We learn about the wars, and their consequence in order to learn from the events. We do not learn about wars so that each of us can spit out meaningless numbers such as the date of the war, what route was taken, and who was fighting. The why is more important than the where. The How is more important than the when.
> The metric for intelligence has been the ability to retain information, and show such ability by regurgitating memorized data.
That is the metric for passing tests in the 1980s maybe. Maybe some TV stereotype of intelligence is someone who can solve a Rubik's Cube fast. Jeopardy also comes to mind.
But if you are talking about actual metrics, the ones used to measure intelligence, regurgitating facts is only a small part of that (testing different aspects of memory).
> We learn about the wars, and their consequence in order to learn from the events. We do not learn about wars so that each of us can spit out meaningless numbers such as the date of the war, what route was taken, and who was fighting.
When I studied history in school it was always with the goal of understanding the underlying motivations of the actors in play. I don't think I ever had to write down the date a battle happened.
I do understand that things got worse in the US after no child left behind passed, which is unfortunate.
> The why is more important than the where.
Studying the funding sources of the US Revolutionary War was fascinating, to say the least.
(Though I'd say that oftentimes the where and the why are closely linked, especially when it comes to natural resources!)
> I don't think I ever had to write down the date a battle happened.
Heh. Reminds me of coming to a (highly regarded) prep-high school in Eastern Eu back in the day. All seemed awesome at first glance. History teacher was ancient, which added to his cachet. Then the first oral exam came. We quickly caught on that this guy would ask a topic, and stop the student as soon as they deviated from the previously spoken lecture. After that it was a race to write every word he said verbatim, and regurgitate on command exactly word for word. I think the biggest contribution this school had for me is I now don’t feel anxious about the American schools my kids attend which many people complain are falling behind other countries, catering to the least common denominator, and similar. Compared to the rote fest I had I’ll take American schools any day :-)
> But if you are talking about actual metrics, the ones used to measure intelligence, regurgitating facts is only a small part of that...
Your rebuttal is refuted by the entirety of our education system. Regurgitating facts is the /only/ measurement for intelligence in the US Education system.
Does the system care about details? Only memorized dates, times, and locations.
Does the system care about the why or how? Nope. That would require thought. Thought may instigate unrest. Unrest may lead to rebellion or revolution.
The education system only cares about your ability to memorize nonsensical data and regurgitate it at will.
I think what you say yo kids, and what you say to adults should be different.
And like either most of "growing up" the transition from one to the other is hard.
We want our kids to "work hard" because we know that to get places they will need to be able to do that. "Working hard" is a skill they need to learn.
But as adults, in the real world, "hard work" counts for nothing. The world rewards results, not the hours. Working effectively rewards more than working long. It's hard to explain to an employee that despite the fact they work "harder" than their colleagues, they get paid less because they deliver less. "Hard work" counts for very little.
Transitioning from hard work, to effective work, can be confusing for a young adult. That doesn't mean teaching children that hard work doesn't matter. It's precisely because they -can- work hard that it's possible to work smart.
> I think what you say to kids, and what you say to adults should be different.
I strongly disagree. Do you have children? Kids are smart and surprisingly logical. You don't need to molly coddle them about the value of hard work or even that they have different abilities to each other. You can deliver the news that they aren't as strong as their sister in a nice way just like you can deliver the news that an employee isn't as productive as their coworker in a nice way (and obviously avoid delivering it at all if possible in both cases).
If you want good parenting advice just watch Bluey. Look at how they talk to their children.
Doing postmortem reviews of mistakes is also important, if you are the type without natural competence. I spent a very long time wondering why I was always lost everywhere I go and always making the same mistakes, before I realized the problem was I was expecting my brain to just suddenly be able to do things after lots of practice, rather than using repeatable, failsafe systems like "Just assume you'll forget everything and always set reminders"
How about I just praise them if I genuinely feel they deserve it instead of picking and choosing when to praise in attempt to mold them into something I want them to be.
It's also nonsense. Who cares if you go through some pointless motions of pretending to be a hard worker?
If it comes easy, why not just let it be. For some people it comes easy simply because they are interested in it. Forcing them into busywork is purpose defeating.
Demanding that someone go do meaningless work so they don't get to coast, while a different student has to bust their ass, is absurd. IMO that's often what it is. Teachers get frustrated by underachievers, and how they're often more successful than people that work very hard.
It's not fair, and it hurts to see, but that's life.
Authenticity is important. Praising effort because you read it improves outcomes, even if you internally don’t think it’s praiseworthy, would be inauthentic and eventually degrade your relationship in my opinion. However I’ve been amazed by my daughter for multiple reasons simultaneously. I’ve seen her solve a problem and thought to myself “wow she is so clever and persistent”, then mainly focus on one of those aspects when discussing it later.
Every parent thinks their kid is some kind of genius. It's a universal instinct that makes kids get more praise then they actually deserve.
Run with it. If nature makes you feel that way then "more praise then she actually deserves" is a valid method. Maybe she actually deserves it, but most likely she is average and you're just playing out what every average parent feels.
What research. And what is the definition of best?
Generally speaking eons of evolution has shaped "what comes naturally" to be the parenting traits most effective at enabling survival of the fittest or some other trait that enables mass propagation of genes. But survival of the fittest is just one possible definition of "best".
> But work hard on stupid things? No one cares and you'll be overlooked and even hated on at times.
You clearly have no experience in multinational corporations, this quality is enough, with a bit of luck (ie don't get fired by chance in some broad firing rounds, your direct manager is not psycho, your whole location is closed etc.) to get quite far.
Corps need people who are willing to wade through bureaucracy, cumbersome rules and processes, chase people across globe and tick checklists. Hard work can get all that done, no real brilliance needed. Also there are tons of stupid things that are required by various regulations and laws for example.
I mean of course within limits. You are not going to move 10 levels higher to c-suite just by working hard for 2 decades, but having non-trivial career jumps is not unheard of.
These are separate things. Coach your kids. Praise them when they put in the work. Don't sour their successes by telling them they could do better. Accept them at their ability.
Unconditional love is a trope I want to die so badly. It's so.... Selfish? I read it as "You don't matter at all. I'm so big hearted and perfect; isn't it glorious?" I love my kid and wife because of who they are and specific things they do. And I tell them that. And I also tell them they can always change and my love for them will continue and change with them
I don't think that's what "unconditional love" means or should be taken to mean. It usually means that your ability to love someone is not contingent on an expectation of reciprocity. For example, an infant can't really verbalize affection, but you can nevertheless love them.
Unconditional love also doesn't mean "no boundaries". You can love someone while insisting, for example, that they respect your autonomy or decisions.
Its hard to imagine, and would probably break me. Something like admitted, intentional, malicious, torture of our entire family for no benefit whatsoever might do it.
I don’t think you can both love someone while also thinking they “don’t matter at all”. But maybe your definition of love is different.
A parent simply telling their child, unconditionally, that they love them isn’t enough. You have to believe they do matter and are worth something.
If you can say that about your child despite their many flaws, and potentially how they might hurt you [1], to me is what unconditional love is more about.
[1] That is, humans aren’t perfect, and will on occasion hurt other humans, to some extent — especially children that are still developing and trying to figure out what is and isn’t appropriate.
I don't think you're reading me properly. I think the statement is bs, not the feeling. Of course the individual matters! That's my entire point about the statement being bs.
And to the other half, of course the conditions are incredibly nuanced and context dependent and probably unknowable to boot. It's not some sort of "three strikes and you're out" situation.
> But isn't that what "unconditional" demands of you?
I think we're stuck on this word.
Unconditional means, to many, "without any conditions attached" i.e. I will love you even if you don't love me back. I will love you regardless of the amount of money, status, good looks, $FOO, $BAR or $BAZ you have.
I will love you, no matter the consequences, or the pain I will feel for doing so.
IOW, it is love you feel without control; if you have control over it, it is conditional.
I have not, until now, come across a definition of unconditional love to mean "I'm such a great person, I will love you even though you are not", or similar.
I agree the word is the sticking point. Unconditional to me means there is literally nothing that can change it. No conditions.
If you found out the relationship was a giant ruse created by a bored billionaire and the person began behaving completely differently because the contract ended: doesnt matter.
All sorts of wacky scenarios you can dream up.
I can't help but feel like saying unconditional love is a giant cop out. I love people for reasons. Important reasons. Some of those reasons can't change (e.g. you are my mom/dad/kid) but those aren't the only reasons. And it's important to me to communicate those attributes of people I love. And obviously the whole is bigger than the parts in some ineffable way. And I (try to) communicate that too.
But the whole concept of unconditional love says nothing. It is a cop out. And ultimately, a lie
Love is a choice, not a circumstance, and unconditional love is the strongest form of it. I choose to love you even if you stop having characteristics I like. I choose to love you regardless of any good or bad qualities you have. I love you because you are, but I'll even love you after you stop being (what else is grief?).
I don't know if you can understand it until you've received it. Until two years ago, I thought "love" itself was a lie we tell children to manipulate them into doing what we want, like Santa Claus.
But then somebody loved me. Somebody saw me, heard me, knew me, understood me. He found joy in my existence, often because of his own determination to do so, not because I was making it apparent.
He just loves me because I'm me and not him. If only one of us matters in this situation, from his perspective, it's me, not him. He wills my good for my sake, not his own, and even at his own expense.
You seem to be using "love" to mean something like "like a whole lot," and maybe that's why unconditionality doesn't make sense.
Love is an act of the will, not a response to a circumstance.
I think we'll simply agree to disagree. But suffice to say that I don't need you to explain love to me or tell me that what I feel isn't "real" love. And simply because we disagree on an adjective some people like to attach to their love and which I do not? How myopic and unnecessarily condescending of you.
I hope you experience unconditional love someday. I spent my whole life thinking, like you, that it wasn't real. That opinion was largely formed from infancy, by someone who did use it as you describe, to inflate his own beneficence at my expense.
All I can say is that I was completely and totally wrong about the nature of love (and, as I found out from that later, actually of the world). I don't think I could have understood that from someone's internet post about it. I may even have read their description of it as a condescending condemnation.
But it might have helped me hold out hope for what I now know to be true, hearing someone else insist it was real, against the unequivocal evidence of my entire life. And that hope would have been worth having.
I've vacillated a couple times on whether to respond to you, but apparently you've poked me in a place I can't just ignore and move on from.
My goodness you are a sanctimonious asshole. We are disagreeing about how to express extraordinary love. I think the common expression of "unconditional love" is both a shallow platitude and a lie. You think it is this over-the-moon perfect version of love. Fair enough, we disagree.
And yet, you have somehow twisted that into me not having experienced "unconditional love" that you apparently just discovered for yourself in the recent past? Do you always resort to debasing someone else's life experience when you disagree with their perspective?
The height of arrogance and foolishness you admit to is absolutely staggering! You claim this sole understanding of love, a question which has plagued and delighted humanity as far back as our history goes. And yet you, a person who has very recently fallen in love. Someone who confuses a partner who today sacrifices themselves for your benefit with one who will forever love you. You have it all figured out. You know the love I experience and give to my parents, my sister, my wife, my children. You know that it is not true simply because I think calling it "unconditional" is a shallow cop out. That I would deign to tell the people I love their attributes, our memories, our shared experiences and challenges, our disagreements, everything about us that is the reason I have love for them. Somehow, this expression which contains so much. This is less than the simple word "unconditional". What a farce.
I challenge you to actually describe your love for your new found partner. Be specific. Anything that could be used to describe some garden variety love between the main characters in a romantic comedy cannot be used. After you figure it out, tell them too. See if that description does not in fact strengthen your relationship and help your love grow.
I guess the one condition is that they ate the individual that they are, and not some other individual. So it matters that they are that specific individual (e.g. your child).
I find the concept problematic as well. In practice there can certainly be limits.
Well, unconditional love does originate from the favorable treats you mentioned, but its also the stories you had with them, your experiences, your ups and downs. Everything that made your life a little more worthwhile by simply standing by your side. Past a point, i believe it is impossible to end that relationship voluntarily, for both sides.
If it was only because for who they are, I dont think your love for them would continue nor evolve, it would be a simple materialistic jealousy, never making it past conditions (hence, unconditional love).
This is a shallow treatment of a complicated subject. It doesn't seem to acknowledge that the concept of growth mindset has been challenged, somewhat successfully. [1] It does not seem to have a large effect in the aggregate, according to most meta-analyses. Also, the largest positive effect seems to be for students who are struggling (not surprisingly), which means that perhaps it actually has a net negative effect for students who are not struggling. And there are benefits to praising students for ability when they have unique abilities — this can lead them to feel that they want to cultivate those abilities.
You are completely right about this being a shallow treatment of a complicated subject.
There are many different functions the concept of the "growth mindset" serve. Unfortunately, we do not differentiate between them, which as you pointed out can make quite challenging to even discuss.
For example, the OpEd by Hattie you linked is also a fairly undeveloped exploration of what we are really getting at when we discuss the growth mindset. On one hand, for example, it is a way to help children cope with psychological struggle. On the other hand, it is a paradigm by which we live and fit into societal hierarchical structures.
I would argue that although having a fixed mindset might be a "tool" to use so that you don't "try too hard and hurt yourself" (which is more or less what Hattie argues), it is a terrible general paradigm to live by as it is fundamentally, a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are born "dumb" and unable to read, that will always be the case. Obviously this is not how brains work. The reasonable conclusion here is that the growth-mindset is the closer model to reality and the fixed-mindset is a tool to help handle "moments in time".
Each of my children started hating school once the teachers started talking about the importance of having a 'growth mindset'. Some teachers prefer to moralize rather than teach, and the growth mindset unfortunately gives them the perfect outlet for that.
Yes, it is also consistent with the "there is no difference in innate ability between students" that is popular in certain circles (CA Math Framework, looking at you). This allows schools to pretend that they don't need to provide advanced learning for students who are able to move more quickly through material.
I feel that teachers learning about how their interactions contribute to how young students think and feel about themselves and the subject is important. The teachers directly talking about 'growth mindset' to students seems to work against it. It makes me think of corporate speak. For example 'synergy' is worth thinking about (make sure we're working together effectively and similar), but the when we start talking about finding synergies or improving our synergy, eyes start rolling.
That's an interesting point, I guess the whole thing is rooted in not wanting to communicate to kids that their success is the result of innate, immutable talent. But if the kid didn't actually work hard, and you praise their hard work, you're still kind of communicating that.
I've seen this advice before and I have so many issues with it.
First, it just seems like this kind of "parental optimization" is likely to have such a small effect on long-term outcomes that it's probably a wash overall.
Second, kids don't acquire all their information about themselves from their parents and teachers. By the time they reach early elementary school, kids, especially smart ones, know whether they are trying harder than their peers and whether they're succeeding more than their peers. They know what was easy and what was hard from their own experience, and they have a theory of mind and if an adult tells them something at odds with their experience they could just devalue that adult's credibility.
Third, when it comes time to start thinking about what you want to do for a career, it really pays to choose the things where you can succeed without feeling as if you worked very hard.
Finally "hard work", it self is a vague concept that I think often misleads young people into to thinking that effort is not merely a means to an end, but the end itself. In fact what we really mean by "hard work" is some combination of traits like diligence, conscientiousness, and persistence that lead people to dot all their 'i's and cross all their 't's, and not quit until they've succeeded. In fact, when you become an adult and are out working, nobody cares how hard you worked, only that you succeeded.
> Second, kids don't acquire all their information about themselves from their parents and teachers. By the time they reach early elementary school, kids, especially smart ones, know whether they are trying harder than their peers and whether they're succeeding more than their peers. They know what was easy and what was hard from their own experience, and they have a theory of mind and if an adult tells them something at odds with their experience they could just devalue that adult's credibility.
We're not saying to praise hard work that wasn't. We're saying to give more kudos for good outcomes from effort than good outcomes from natural talent.
The reasons to do this:
- Eventually things always get hard enough that you can't carry the day on talent alone. If you haven't learned to persevere in things that don't come naturally by then, you're going to have a bad time.
- If your self-image is tied too much to ability, then every new task is a potential to fall down and "lose" what others consider special about you without much opportunity for gain; a lot of bright people avoid things that could be tests of their ability because of this fragile self-image.
There's no simple word trick that can accomplish this alone, but framing rewards around effort is one thing (along with seeking appropriate challenge, etc) that can help.
And if you've got a kid who's really talented, it's still likely to be problematic. My oldest is accelerated 4-6 years in math (depending on your baseline) and still breezes through everything with very low effort. But the few times that he's encountered something that's hard for him, he's folded and shown avoidant behavior very quickly compared to peers. He has not needed to build the skills, and characteristics of self-image, needed to try hard at difficult things and it shows.
One of worst failures/dropouts I saw at university were the guys smart enough to do entire high school without any significant effort (ie my roommate left books at school and aced it, in stark contrast with me).
Then they eventually reached subject on uni where some serious effort was required even from them, and many just couldn't get themselves through the suck. Unlike say me who was already used to put effort into getting through, and just increased it a bit when it mattered.
It depends what you're working on. Good luck implementing a functioning network stack if you can't buckle down and work your way through a few dozen RFCs.
I think it depends on what you mean by studying. My view is that college studying is having to memorize everything required to pass tests.
I can easily read RFCs and then apply that knowledge. But I don't need to memorize shit because if I need a detail, I can just go grab the RFC again and grab the info I need.
It is why when I was in college, all my lab work in any subject, computer science, chemistry, etc, was my strength. I could put the knowledge to use. But if I had to memorize shit to regurgitate on a test, I had issues.
Yes, this is why it's important for all students to be given the chance to be challenged, so that they can't skate through HS, which sets (some of) them up to be caught off-guard by university.
> nobody cares how hard you worked, only that you succeeded.
Kind of yes, kind of no. If you paint my house, I kind of assume you can do the bulk work, but I care more about the transitions. Did you do the hard work of taking the time to remove outlet covers and mask outlets? Or did you work quickly and paint most of the outlets, make the covers hard to remove and leave the wall under the covers unpainted?
Either way, the house is painted, but the quality of the job and the likelyhood of referal is quite different.
The post is light on details but they do cite one study. Do you have anything other than intuition for your beliefs? I’ve not studied the issue and know nothing about childhood development so my intuition is almost certainly riddled with misconceptions that have been debunked already. Do you have training in this area?
> Finally "hard work", it self is a vague concept that I think often misleads young people into to thinking that effort is not merely a means to an end, but the end itself.
Really hit the nail on the head. I've been struggling to put this into words. I'd add that this really has to do with our notions of justice. When we see people not working, seeming to get away with something, it hurts to see another person try really hard and fail.
There's really this cult of work for work's sake. I'd argue that hard work is inherently bad.
There are some good ideas here, but it's a false dichotomy. The key takeaway should be, don't tell children they're fundamentally bad at something. This is different than not praising ability.
Effort is important, but it can be wasted. Low effort high results is more important than raw effort. Effort and ability are equally important.
Now, think about ability itself. This is the recognition of an individual to be able to perform results. However, it confuses the results with the child. Results are what is important, and without them there is no ability. It's wasted ability. So instead of praising ability directly, I'd suggest praising results. Effort + results.
Telling a child they are bad at something is also important. They may need to be told this so they can improve, but this is the crucial bit. They need to have a path open to improve. People change. If you say they cannot enough, and they believe it, they truly cannot.
This is a good point. In practice, you need to acknowledge effort, ability and outcome. If you're thinking about areas of study or work, you really want to pick something you enjoy where you can produce quality outcomes and that almost always means ability + effort.
One of my kids basically sailed through his first 12 years of schooling on pure ability and zero effort. He's now learning the hard way that innate talent only gets you so far. His brother doesn't have the same innate academic ability, but is a natural grinder. He's finding the later years of schooling are easy to adapt to because he can pick things he's good at and knows how to put in the effort.
In terms of praise, we over-index on effort because it's a cross-cutting concern. This is especially true at younger ages where kids can't choose what they're studying. So if they get a C in French but maxed out all the effort criteria, I'm more than happy with that - and it's something for them to keep in mind when they're picking subjects later down the line.
As a former student of Sir Thomas Rich's grammar school[1], I am reminded of their grading scheme combining effort [A-E] & attainment tier [1-5]. Often the two marks were linked (A1, B2 etc), but the coveted low-effort:high-attainment grades did show up occasionally. I recall a friend of mine receiving a D1 grade: he essentially belligerently phoned it in for the effort quota, but somehow got the right answers.
Terrible advice. People are different, very different. They are good at different things and bad at different things. The key to success in life is finding the few things you are good at, and building on top of them. Also, finding things you are terribly bad at, and bringing them to a tolerable level.
If you want kids to be successful in life, you need to help them discover their strengths and weaknesses, not teach them to blindly follow the process that is more important that outcome.
Children are people and like any people they can tell when you are having an inauthentic interaction. Just be a normal person to your kids, don’t try to “hack” them.
Secondly, I really enjoyed mathematics at school, but it was always way too easy for me. If my parents had followed this advice I would have never got any praise at all, which would have been extremely demotivating.
Praise your kids for their efforts, and also praise them for their abilities.
I stopped praising hard work some time ago when I really started to look at society around me. I don't want my kid to think that hard work is the key to happiness. Satisfaction is an admirable goal, pride in ones work is an admirable goal, staying up late and working all weekend for an A is not an admirable goal.
Call us cynical but we've started teaching our kids a gamer attitude towards school. There are 'tricks' you can learn to get an A that aren't staying up all night reading every single page in your Physics textbook.
At its core, hard work is what provides self-satisfaction, I think. If you work hard and appreciate the effort you put in, it will feel like a success.
Efficiency or effectiveness of a solution is what elicits external satisfaction. Others appreciate you for your efforts when it benefits them greatly.
I think both sides are necessary! Some people naturally favor one vs. the other, too, and respond better to one of these two types of feedback.
I'm an engineer. If I'm designing "X", I'm much more satisfied if I can find a way to do it in a day modifying "Y" than if I spent two weeks building up "X" from scratch.
Hard work also depends on the context and again we're talking about school where students have limited choices over what they're working on. I hated writing. I still hate writing. Spending long hours writing an essay on Camus didn't make me feel satisfied, it made me feel drained. Even if I'd gotten an A ( I can't remember, I might have if only because no one else was dumb enough to take on French extisentialism ) it wasn't satisfying because I didn't care if I was a good writer or not.
You seem to forget that no matter how much effort and success we have it's always the bosses son who gets the reward. And that sure doesn't feel like success.
Resiliency is becoming more important in our increasingly feudal society. Learn to roll with the punches and don't expect hard work to be rewarded.
Sorry to say but what you describe is definitely not new to human society… that’s been the way since the beginning of time, and will always be the way.
It's also often wasteful. You can claim that "there's always more to learn in any subject", but if someone legitimately knows the material, any activity is more meaningful including playing video games or TV.
I suspect many of these people would also misjudge hard work, for example when people self-teach out of interest, well that's just them having fun. The many hours sports star spent on the playground were just playing.
The idea in some mind is you have to take the hard way (no short cuts!). I can just feel how smug people are when they say this. So the idea of someone not grinding fills them with blind rage.
It's worth considering what people mean when they say "hard work." Ever since I read a LessWrong post called "Pain is not the unit of Effort,"[1] I've come to realize that hard work has always implied suffering for me.
If I spend a half-dozen hours dealing with drivers issues on Linux, someone might consider me hard-working. Other people would consider it a massive pain in the ass, and for that reason, they'd probably consider it a lot of hard work. But it doesn't seem that way to me, and it's probably because I find that sort of activity engaging and (relatively) painless.
Related: What is the unit of work for software development?
It's not tasks or lines of code or bugs closed - that's the outcome of the work, or the work product.
What is a unit of work? I invite you to come up with your own answer before reading mine.
I think the unit of work for software development is learn and try. Learn something, try it. Learn something, try it. It's a cycle, so its also try something, learn (that it doesn't work), try something else, repeat.
I think this is an important thing to coach junior developers on - I've seen many junior developers try something, and the code still doesn't work, so they revert the thing they tried, without knowing or evaluating whether they got closer to the desired result.
So it's not try something and see if it worked, it's try something and determine the state of the system.
As you approach this answer from a functional programming perspective, I imagine a “unit of work” becomes intuitive: something that provides a correct result for its inputs.
Integration of these is also a unit of work.
In my mind, it’s also a requirement to be tested, either via true unit testing (generally), or if logical, offloading to the compiler to statically provide coverage.
This doesn’t cover aligning work with the problem statement, or design. But that’s art.
(Edit: I’m describing a function in paragraph 1, and a pure function is especially easy to digest as the ideal candidate for a UOW).
Have we considered not even attempting Skinnerian behavioral modification on children?
The feedback already exists in the outcomes of the child's actions, for example, their grades in school. Why do we need to add additional praise or blame on top of the existing feedback? The scores are what they are, and the child can react to them as they are, interpret them at face value.
Of course children can be guided and/or pushed to improve their performance, but that involves advice and instruction, not praise and blame. If you want to help a child to do better at, say, math, isn't it better to do some math with them rather than doling out praise or blame and then sending them off to their room with no other effort from the parent? How about demonstrating to them that effort leads to improvement?
If some kid finds a way to get results effortlessly, if it is honest, it should be praised. Results are what matter in the end, and I think clever shortcuts are as praiseworthy as hard work. Later in life, people don't get paid for effort. And hard work is an ability too, not everyone is "wired" for hard work (ex: ADHD).
Maybe the article fails recognize that “being smart and innovative” is an ability too and it’s praise-worthy.
> Results are what matter in the end, and I think clever shortcuts are as praiseworthy as hard work. Later in life, people don't get paid for effort
I generally don’t agree with this. Result is all that matters but count many times you can get it with clever shortcuts, most time efforts do pay off and get you what you want. Praising clever shortcuts can encourage cheating that what I fear the most. Once that gets into your mind, hard to get out
Praising children for things that aren't true isn't good either IMHO. If your kid doesn't work hard, but does a good job anyway, don't mislead them by praising them for their hard work.
Too much of parenting advice is about doing subtle things to manipulate them to be who you want them to be. Just make yearly goals with your kids and help them accomplish those goals.
I am a parent of two, and I honestly don't understand these kind of posts. When a child comes home excited about some great marks, all we say is "Awesome, good for you" and celebrate the moment. Then at 7pm when the child comes back from play, we sit down for home assignments and whatever needs to be studied next.
terrible idea to fetishize effort. this leads to self-abuse and things like participatory economics. not to mention inefficiency and, in the extreme, famine.
is the world so well off that results can be deprioritized and take a back seat to energy expenditure? and if that's the case, give me back my incandescent lightbulbs.
I have seen little evidence that there is such thing as natural ability, except in rare cases such as actual geniuses, where the elasticity of the brain cannot adapt to develop that ability.
An important lesson children should be taught as earlu as possible is that effort is useless and wasteful if they fail. I agree with perhaps lowering the bar until they develop the skill, but fundamentally engraining tolerance for failure into a child is one of the worst things you can do to a human psyche. It's nearly impossible to remove that mindset later ok. In every aspect of their life they won't just fail, they'll use their supposed natural inability as an excuse for many other harmful ends!
I am not suggesting making them feel like losers when they fail. What should happen is you tell them: "You failed and it's all your fault, but so long as you learn from your failure and keep trying to succeed, you are on the right path."
Talent, effort, opportunities, genius all mean nothing in the real world without perseverance. The most talentess and clueless fool can succeed beyond anyone else simply by virtue of perseverance and discipline.
Praising a child is making them associate a good emotion with the thing they are praised for. Don't let that thing be failure. Even worse, don't let them believe they are fundamentally flawed and handicapped when that isn't true. When they see other kids work hard and succeed, the conclusion is effort is enough because they are incapable anyways.
I don't even know how the author put together such a horrible advice but please! If you insist on bringing a human into this world, don't ruin their chances in life over bullshit like this where the only purpose is to make insincere parents feel good about themselves. Do the right thing which is hard and uncomfortable.
I'm nearly desperately hoping you really mean to say, "effort is useless and wasteful if they fail *and then quit out of frustration*" , or something like that (and that would also be horrible advice, just not quite as insane as what you seem to be proposing. even quitting something out of frustration is a learning experience).
Teaching a child that failure is not an option is tantamount to psychological abuse. I shudder to imagine how petrified a child would be to take any steps toward anything at all with a deep fear of failure embedded.
I suppose everything you've ever done, ride a bike never fell (failed), played sports your team never lost (failed), played an instrument never had a bad performance? (failed) Basically any skill or achievement whatsoever requires a very deep and foundational tolerance for repeated, frequent failure in order to achieve. Not sure how that isn't obvious...
> I'm nearly desperately hoping you really mean to say, "effort is useless and wasteful if they fail and then quit out of frustration" , or something like that (and that would also be horrible advice, just not quite as insane as what you seem to be proposing. even quitting something out of frustration is a learning experience).
Sort of. Failire is failure. Period. You don't praise a child for failing. You metioned quitting but I didn't. You let them know they failed but then help them understand why and help them figure out what they can do about it. They are not a failure as a person because they failed at a task, failure and success does not define them, you should teach them that along with the lesson that failure must not be accepted without understanding the root cause and even then it is to be understood not praised.
> Teaching a child that failure is not an option is tantamount to psychological abuse. I shudder to imagine how petrified a child would be to take any steps toward anything at all with a deep fear of failure embedded
That's not what I said. Option or not, failure should not be praised,that's what I said. In fact, praising failure is fearing acknowledging what it really is. It's not failing that is terrible but acceptance of failure as a positive. Failure is essential to learn anything meaningful, but praising a child for failing means they won't progress past failing, you should teach them that while failure is terrible, it can be overcome and show them how to succeed and then earn praise. And if that isn't possible, work to understand that while they won't get praise for it, understanding why they can't succeed by learning from insurmountable failure will only make them better.
> whatsoever requires a very deep and foundational tolerance for repeated, frequent failure in order to achieve. Not sure how that isn't obvious...
That's very obvious, because you don't get a prize or reward for failing, that's why you keep failing until you succeed and then enjoy a well earned reward. Encouragement to keep failing until you succeed and praising for merely having effort but not succeeding are very different things.
I cant imagine you have kids. You can praise a child for failing as much as you want, they are never going to want to only fail. Our child has a deep fear of failure that has prevented them from moving forward with learning particular skills - to some extent it is definitely my own fault as a father as they were able to sense, no matter how much I tried to hide it, my inner dissatisfaction with some of this failure (VERY subtle, hidden, merely the lack of my positivity at their failure was all they needed to perceive to develop a pretty significant and demotivating fear of failure). So we are actually having to tell our child, "please go and try, and fail. we WANT you to fail. because if you aren't failing, you aren't even trying. So please feel free to FAIL as often as you need. the more you fail, the more you are trying". We are about as close to what you are describing as "rewarding for failure". To think that this means the kid is going to intentionally do poorly on things, well, that's not our kid and not any kid I've ever known, so what you are referring towards sounds like some kind of theoretical thought experiment with no basis in reality, and definitely something that would very easily lead kids like mine to be petrified of trying anything.
my personal experience as a parent directly matches the point of view of this article, which refers to research from child development experts.
> Our child has a deep fear of failure that has prevented them from moving forward with learning particular skills
What I am saying is actually in-line with your approach of encouraging them to overcome that fear. My disagreement is when you tell them failure is ok. You are confusing "try+fail" with "try". You praise their perseverance not their failure and perseverance isn't possible because you fear failure, it is possible because you believe in them and love them no matter what, their worth isn't tied to the outcome of their efforts, they persevere because they want to succeed and because failure sucks.
To put it differently, when you say "it's ok to fail" you want them to not feel bad about themselves when they fail. But the shortcoming there is you didn't tell them failure itself isn't good, it just doesn't define them and shouldn't be feared.
In the real world they will fail a lot and you won't be there to coddle them. The best you can do is teach them to not fear failure or be discouraged by it but to understand its cause and overcome it. To despise failure without making it your identity and celebrate and pursue success.
Last thing, if praising means showing love and affection then that is just messed up, that's a given! You should display affection to a child no matter what, not contingent on their success or failure. I am sure you agree with me on this, but also, that means reaffirming to them that their value and worth in life is also not contingent on their success. But nevertheless, success should be pursued and failure despised because failure in the long run means harming themselves or harming others one way or the other. Failing at math isn't a big deal but accepting failure there could mean a mindset that accepts failure in their jobs, marriage, friendships, business,etc... and expecting others to praise them when they fail and getting upset when that doesn't happen.
> I am not suggesting making them feel like losers when they fail. What should happen is you tell them: "You failed and it's all your fault, but so long as you learn from your failure and keep trying to succeed, you are on the right path."
Something as simple as undoing the participation trophy culture we've created would go a long way. There is a lot of utility in developing a healthy attitude toward failure. The problem is the pendulum swung way too hard from "win or come back on your shield" to "everyone is a winner in their own special way". Reinforcing either of these will lead to developmental problems. Though, IMO, at least the first one partially reinforces perseverance even in the face of failure.
> Praising a child is making them associate a good emotion with the thing they are praised for. Don't let that thing be failure. Even worse, don't let them believe they are fundamentally flawed and handicapped when that isn't true. When they see other kids work hard and succeed, the conclusion is effort is enough because they are incapable anyways.
I can add some more here: you can try very hard and fail. Failing is important because it builds grit. Grit builds the necessary framework to succeed even against odds stacked against you. If you simply make things easier, or reward someone for trying, it releases the happy chemicals that make it acceptable to not try harder. Part of the benefit of programs like ROTC, some sports, etc is that it can take someone who is an amorphous blob of suck and turn them into something they can be proud of. There's a lot to be said about that. Maybe there's some sort of relationship between the reduction in PE programs and the increase in this sort of "accepting failure" behavior.
You do not need to shark attack your child when they do poorly. However, you also should not praise them for being mediocre. Reinforce perseverance, as you suggest. It's your job to give your child the necessary framework to persist through struggle. Otherwise, as we have seen with many "adults", you end up with members of society who are fundamentally incapable of doing anything without constant praise. Casualties of the helicopter parenting generation.
> Something as simple as undoing the participation trophy culture we've created would go a long way.
My now-dated recollection is that most kids had no problem recognizing "participation" trophies as substandard and lacking prestige. Everybody--including the recipient--knew it wasn't a real win. They were something you sheepishly accepted hoping that you could minimize your time in the spotlight and that peers wouldn't somehow tease you for it.
So, hypothesis: Participation trophies exist because of by pressure from parents. Either as a way for teachers/kids to mollify parents who want to see their child "win", or else parents who think they can trick their child into motivation.
With that framing--cynical kids and mistaken adults--the "participation trophy culture" has wildly different problems and solutions.
I think it's a Chesterton's Fence thing -- nobody remembers why we give out participation trophies, so we continue giving them out. Their importance is overblown. Nobody is fooled.
I remember my daughter came home with a ribbon, and I asked her what it was for. She said: "Oh, it's just one of those ribbons that you get for participating."
We signed her up for kids' soccer. It was a league where they didn't keep score. Yet the kids knew exactly what the score was after each game, and who the best players were.
I remember as a kid that my motivation came from things where I could measure my own performance, such as getting through a math problem, or playing pieces on the cello, of escalating difficulty.
Mostly agree with what you said, looks like you also got downvotes though. The current sentiment is robbing kids of being able to accomplish things and be proud of themselves.
Like many things, extremes are easy and the lazy advocate for one extreme or the other but what is best is a healthy balance.
At the core I think a lot of adults grew up believing success or failure is their identity, it's who they are. Instead of overcoming that false belief, they twisted reality so that failure is as good as success. Their and their child's identity is still the outcome if their efforts except they dilluted reality and made a negative to be the equal of a positive.
Ok, putting aside it's important to be emotionally warm towards your children and ensure they understand you love them "unconditionally"[1], I do think it's also important to help them to learn retrospect and to work smarter.
"What a great mark you've earned! What do you think was working about your approach?" (then praise and encourage them for whatever they say so long as it's remotely reasonable). I just say this because I feel like the "work hard" mentality actually hasnt served me in life. Once you work for a business no one cares how "hard" you work, if it's not smart first. Smart is the more powerful variable, you can work Smart and not hard and be quite successful. But work hard on stupid things? No one cares and you'll be overlooked and even hated on at times.
[1] - I'm not a parent, but honestly everyone has a limit, and frankly love should not be truly impossible to lose. My love will stop if they butcher my wife, burn down my house, and call me fat.