This sounds like an extension of the recently widely covered practice of not telling your kids they're smart. Basically, studies have shown that praising your child for intelligence as opposed to hard work can cause them to undervalue effort. They start to separate subjects into things they are "good" at and things they are "bad" at. They then avoid the things they've labeled themselves as bad at doing.

On the contrary, praising a child for their hard work seems to not be associated with this same negative behavior. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/lifestyle/2012/02/why-you-should...