Don’t you just hate it when you try to offer positive encouragement to your child, but it falls completely flat?

It happened to me just this week. My oldest came home and proudly showed me the ‘A’ he got on his biography of Lord Admiral Nelson. I was so impressed that I immediately said, “Good Job!”

He looked at me expectantly for a few more seconds. And then his face fell.

“Ugh. That’s what you always say!” he said, and he snatched his paper out of my hands, obviously disappointed.

“But,” I stammered, “I really think you did a great job!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” he muttered as he walked away dejected.

I felt like the carpet had been pulled out from under my feet. Here I was thinking that I’d been encouraging my son. Apparently though, “good job” wasn’t the way to go.

This is not the case in just our house. Research has shown consistently that generic praise like “good job” may actually do more harm than good.

There is even research which suggests praising children on how they did can cause your child to instinctively reject the praise or, even worse yet, deliberately do the opposite. If they don’t believe they did a good job, having you say “good job” means nothing. Children result in feeling manipulated to perform and they will rebel against the manipulation.

Too much “good job” praise from parents can also cause children to lose their internal motivation. They achieve only to receive approval from you and not because they are interested in what they are learning or feel good about succeeding. This creates adults who are unable to find satisfaction because they don’t have practice in feeling what makes them satisfied.

So, if we are to avoid blanket praise like “good job”, what can we say instead that will show our kids we really are proud of them and impressed by their achievement? How can we offer our kids positive encouragement?

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I hate shopping with my children.

There. I said it. And I’ll say it again.

I hate shopping with my children.

There is nothing I dread more than taking my kids into a store. Any store. Grocery. Clothing. Toys. Especially toys.

It’s not that they are bad children. They are well-behaved for the most part. But at some point, as we are wandering around the store, the “I WANT” Monster appears.

The “I WANT” Monster is a wild little Tasmanian devil.  He comes whirling and spinning out of his cave at the first scent of anything bright and shiny and new.

“I want this.”

“Can I have that?”

“I need these.”

“Please, please buy me those.”

Everything around them is a candy-colored rainbow.  It’s sooooo tempting.

“I just can’t stand it!” panted my 7-year-old son, standing in the Star Wars aisle of Target, tortured by the clones and Jedi surrounding him.

Me either, son.

What’s with all this greed? Where does the “I WANT” Monster come from anyway?

Every child wants things. Heck, we all want things. Just today I was tempted by a really pretty China bowl with metal hummingbird on the rim and a hot pair of heels that would look perfect with a dress I have.

In a world of television and social media overload, our society has pushed “keeping up with the Jones’s” to a whole new level. It’s hard to curb materialistic desires, but here are 5 techniques that can help.

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I try really hard to be a positive parent.

I’ve stopped yelling (mostly).

We practice special time.

I say something specific about their homework rather than simply “good job.”

Positive parenting has changed the relationship I have with my kids entirely. When it really matters, when I’ve had a stressful day or a task is really important to me, my kids listen. And when it really matters to them, I make them feel heard and valued.

But every so often, I find that regular everyday situations still trip me up. And just like that,  I find myself struggling to stay on the positive parent wagon. [Read more…]

Grit

Determination

Tenacity

They are all words for Resilience.

Resilience is more than the buzzword of the year. It is what gives us “the courage to go after our dreams, despite the very real risk that we’ll fail in some way or other.”

Isn’t that what we want for our kids? To go after their dreams and their passions and achieve them? Ever since I read Carol Dweck’s now-famous book Mindset : The New Psychology of Success I have been looking for ways to teach my kids this kind of resilience.

We go on hikes and do brain-teaser puzzles. We have even tried a ropes course in our quest to build resilience within them. It was in the midst of walking my oldest son through an algebra problem that I realized that resilience isn’t just a mindset, it’s a habit.

Resilience should be as much a habit as brushing your teeth in the morning or having a snack after school.

It’s something that we should be building into our everyday lives in such a way it becomes an unconscious choice. We simply don’t consider giving up when we don’t get that math problem right the first time. Trying again is our habit.

My boys are good at showing resilience in big moments or for specific projects. For example, my oldest son wanted to experiment with parallel circuits for a science project. He had all kinds of issues with the connections between the wires. The tape would slip or the wires wouldn’t be making good contact with the battery or he attached the wire incorrectly.

There were definitely moments of extreme frustration. He lost his temper several times and had to walk away from his project a few times. But he always came back and tried it all again.

In his everyday life he doesn’t seem to have that kind of resilience as his default. We recently got new kittens. I asked him to open the can of food for them and that’s when the trouble hit. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to open a can of cat food, but that flip-top lid can be difficult to open. When he was unable to get the can open he just gave up!

He didn’t even ask for help! He just stopped trying completely and left the can on the counter for me to find. The resilience to keep trying at the lid was not a part of his default setting.

So how do we make it a real habit? How can we teach them everyday resilience?

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