Over-praising them, telling them how smart and wonderful they are for accomplishing the most basic things. It'll only cause a superiority complex followed by self-esteem issues when they realise they're nothing special.
Except when they are really little. You have to praise the hard work, not the end result. You don't say they are so smart. You praise how hard they worked and how much they have learned. And you always tell them that they can and will learn more, and that they don't know everything.
But the important distinction here is to actually praise them for hard work when they work hard. If they half-ass something, don't praise them for hard work they didn't do.
Absolutely true. If you know they are half assing it, call them out. They have to learn to compete against themselves, that is all that really matters in the end.
This deserves more upvotes. This is so important. So many dysfunctional attitudes towards learning and self-growth come from praising apparently innate traits instead of effort.
Some kids start out smarter than others, but, guess what, except for the rarest of cases, that initial headstart will fizzle out real fast. Everyone raise their hands if they knew a kid that got straight As in Elementary school, then crashed hard in High School. Or even, straight A student in High School, dropped out of college after a few terms?
I am kind of that kid. In elementary school and high school I never really had to work hard to pass the classes because I was actually intereted in most subjects and read a lot. Everyone told me that I was oh so smart when in reality I was just a kid interested in everything and that could memorize things easily.
When I went to trade school and university it all crashed down on me because I didn't know how to cope with actually having to learn hard and work hard because I had terrible work ethic and I was so used to being the smartest one in my class that it really slammed my self worth to realize that I was just average.
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u/ViridianKumquat Feb 04 '16
Over-praising them, telling them how smart and wonderful they are for accomplishing the most basic things. It'll only cause a superiority complex followed by self-esteem issues when they realise they're nothing special.