The Way You Praise Your Children Can Improve Their Intellectual Development
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How to encourage a hunger for knowledge in your child by using praise!
In this article, I am going to present research on how children respond to praise. This research exhibits that children can be encouraged to develop a tenacious mindset in relation to learning. This tenacity will aid your children in achieving success in their academic and professional lives.
People are complex beings and we are all unique. Despite our differences, the way we respond to praise is fairly consistent. Praise is a reward and receiving a reward inspires determination. This starts at a very young age.
When training a dog, we give a reward for a job well done. This usually results in the dog continuing to seek the reward and perform the task being asked of him repeatedly.
For humans, our preferred reward is also praise for performing well. However, after some research, I have found the way in which humans are praised is what makes the difference between success and failure. Practicing these techniques can be beneficial in children as young as 1–3 years old!
There is an exciting study that has come out led by Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. This study examines how to teach children to develop a “growth” mindset as opposed to a “fixed” mindset.
The differences between “fixed” and “growth” mindsets are very similar to the “nature verses nurture” debate. Fixed is the belief that intelligence and motivation is something you are born with. A growth mindset is a belief that intelligence and ambition are something that can be developed over time and through adversity.
The Study
Carol Dweck studied 373 middle school students. She identified each student as either having a “growth” mindset or a “fixed” mindset. Dweck followed the students from the start of the seventh grade and until the end of the eighth grade. There was a very obvious difference between the two groups and their level of achievement upon the…
