day forty-four: praise older children sincerely without over-praising

“If you're sincere, praise is effective. If you're insincere, it's manipulative.”
           Zig Zigler


Yesterday I talked about how preschoolers respond to praise. Older children can also respond to praise, but they are much more discriminating in the types of, frequency of, and giver of praise.


Research has shown that children seven and under are not so selective about the praise they receive. They often respond to most praise and do not readily see the sincerity or insincerity of the “praiser.” However, children older than this (and this is extremely relative because if children are allowed to be children longer, they keep their innocence and sweet naivety longer) are not so ready to buy the praise lines of everybody.


Older children who perceive that you are insincerely praising them often mistake that praise for pity. They think that you are praising them because you feel sorry for them or think they cannot accomplish things (Henderlong and Lepper 2002). They also often think that when an adult is syrupy with praise, he or she is trying to manipulate (Meyer 1992).


I have seen this borne out with my children. A couple of my children have as their primary love language (more on that later!) words of affirmation. They love to affirm others—and they love to receive affirmation. Because this is their love language, the praise they receive always had to be “just so.” If I just told them they were the greatest fourteen year old daughter or the most amazing sixteen year old son, they would often respond with “You have to say that; you’re my mom.” General, sweeping, effusive praise did not work on these kids! They also sensed that when I would give general praise I was avoiding the specific: “You’re saying I ‘was awesome’ because you thought my speech needed work in the middle.” And they were usually right!


Overpraising a child has the same effect as sweeping, general praise. My kids once had an art teacher who would always start her critique of their work with, “This is just perfect!” Then she would tell them what they needed to work on and what they should change. My “discriminating praise receiver” would go crazy over this: “It can’t be ‘perfect’ or else there wouldn’t be anything to change.” This teacher was outstanding, just a little too sweet! She couldn’t bear the thought of telling a student what he or she needed to work on, so she tried to soften the criticism with “perfect praise,” which does not work well on older kids.


I try to remember this with my writing students. I tell them specifics that are good—good transitions; strong thesis statement; outstanding quotation and double quotation use, etc. And I tell them specifics that need improvement: the main topic of your report is redundant—make a synonym or similar words list to fix that; you can’t join two sentences as one with a comma only; etc. They respond to the specific, sincere praise of the aspects of their paper that they truly did well in. And they respond to the aspects of their paper that they need to work on more readily.


Besides the “you’re perfect” praise, we have to watch for any generalities that simply cannot be true. These include phrasing such as “You are the best colorer in the world,” “There is nobody who can play the piano like you,” etc. Only in extremely rare cases would this be true. We would be better off telling the child that he is being so detailed and careful to stay in the lines that well or that we can really tell that he practiced all of his songs diligently this week—his music sounds terrific.


Finally, overpraise is interpreted as insincere praise. We all know the parent who dotes on her child, commenting about every move the child makes: “You are the best slider in the entire park! Oh, my, you run so fast. There isn’t any little boy who can run as fast as you. Look at those dimples. You are the cutest kid in your preschool!” Now, that might or might not work with a preschooler, but it isn’t healthy regardless of the age and definitely does not work for tweens and teens.


For one thing, the praise is not meaningful because everything the child does cannot be that wonderful! (Okay, I sometimes think everything my kids do is wonderful, but generally speaking, most kids are not great all the time!) For another thing, the child will be so used to hearing that everything is great, that he or she will not be able to tell when something is really good. Lastly, overpraising forces us to lie to our children.


Again, specific, character-driven, process-based, non-constant, genuine, non-syrupy praise works best on older kids. We want to encourage our children in excellence, help them develop the skills and talents they have been given, and endear them to us. Purposeful, honest praise can help us do those things.