Praise or not to praise your kid?

Is praise necessary for kids? Is there a right amount of praise?

These days we praise our children for anything and everything. Whether they swam well or not, whether they played soccer well or not — "good job" is the most common phrase uttered. Does this give kids a false sense of self? It's a bit like winning a tennis match on a game console and confusing it with playing on a real court.

Encouragement is not the same as false praise. It is fine — necessary, even — to praise the effort a child puts in. But praising the child overall, for simply being who they are, builds a self-image of "greatness." And once that image is in place, the child becomes afraid to try anything they might fail at, because failure would break the image. Whatever happened to "practice makes one perfect"?

There has been a complete shift in the last 45–50 years. Earlier, parents were strict and praise was almost unheard of — it was believed praising children would make them haughty. Now it's the opposite: parents praise kids for everything. There's even a term for such parents — "praise junkies" — where the child gets praised for finishing their food, using the bathroom, taking a bath.

But overpraise is as bad as under-praise. Praise nothing, and the child feels incapable and self-doubting. Praise everything, and the child learns to expect applause for existing.

The answer researchers keep returning to is process praise: praise the effort, not the person. Tell the child you noticed how hard they worked, how they kept at it. Their effort-praise loop reinforces the thing they control — the trying — which pushes them to try harder next time.

Children recognize empty praise — especially when parents post every small achievement on Facebook hoping for applause from friends and relatives. Social media has made us more courteous in a not-very-honest way. You see a friend's post about a second grader's piano recital medal, and you like it even though you know it wasn't a competition. The parents and the child get a false sense of self.

So be deliberate about what you praise. Praise the effort the kid put in — not the false laurels, not the everyday activities. It's the closest thing to a free, always-available tool parents have for raising kids who aren't afraid to fail.