Revealing from the Stanford experiment: Parents who say "you are great" every day cannot raise promising children
"Baby, you are awesome!"
"Wow, baby, you are so awesome!"
"You are so smart!"
Are these the mantras you use to praise your children?
We all know that every child craves recognition and praise. Appropriate praise can enhance a child's self-confidence and enthusiasm, making the child like and be willing to do something.
However, praise is also a technical task. Using the wrong method or expression will not only fail to inspire, but may destroy the child's courage and confidence to try.
The secret of the Stanford experiment: Parents who say "you are great" every day cannot raise promising children
Carol Dweck, a famous developmental psychologist at Stanford University, and his team The effects of praise on children have been studied for the past 10 years.
They conducted a long-term study of 400 fifth-grade students in 20 schools in New York.
In the experiment, they asked children to complete a series of intellectual puzzle tasks independently.
The first round of testing
The researchers only called one child from the classroom at a time. The test questions were very simple intellectual puzzles, and almost all the children were able to complete the tasks quite well. . After each child completed the test, the researcher told him the score, along with a word of encouragement or praise.
The researchers randomly divided the children into two groups. One group received a compliment about IQ, that is, praise, such as: "You are very talented in puzzles, you are very smart." < /p>
Another group of children received a sentence of praise for their efforts, that is, encouragement. For example: "You must have worked very hard just now, so you performed well."
Why just give a compliment? Dweck explains: "We want to see how sensitive children are to praise or encouragement. . I had an intuition at the time: a word of praise is enough to see the effect."
Second round of test
There are two tests of different difficulty in the second round of puzzle test. You are free to choose which test to take. One is harder, but you will learn something new during the test. The other is a simple test similar to the previous round.
It was found that 90% of the children who were praised for their efforts in the first round chose the more difficult task.
Most of the children who were praised for being smart chose simple tasks. It can be seen that children who think they are smart do not like to face challenges.
Why is this?
Dweck wrote in the research report:
“When we praise our children for being smart, we are telling them that To stay smart, don't risk making a mistake."
That's what the "smart" kids in the experiment did: avoid the risk of making a fool of themselves in order to stay smart.
Third round of testing
This time, all children took the same test, with no choice. This test is very difficult, it is a first-grade exam. As you can imagine, the children failed. Children who had previously received different types of praise had dramatically different reactions to failure.
Children who had previously been praised for their hard work believed that failure was because they did not work hard enough. And for those children who were praised for their intelligence, their scores this time dropped by about 20% compared to the first time.
Dweck has always suspected that praise may not have a good effect on children, but the results of this experiment were still far beyond her expectations.
She explained:
Encouragement, that is, praising children for working hard, will give children a feeling that they can control themselves. Children will believe that success is in their own hands. On the contrary, praise, that is, praising children for being smart, is tantamount to telling them that success is not within their control. In this way, when they face failure, they are often helpless.
In subsequent follow-up interviews with children, Dweck found that those children who believed that talent was the key to success unconsciously underestimated the importance of hard work.
These children will reason like this: I am smart, so I don’t have to work so hard. They even think that trying hard is stupid and means admitting to everyone that they are not smart enough.
Dweck's experiment was repeated many times.
She found that no matter what family background a child has, they cannot stand the feeling of failure after being praised for being smart.
Boys and girls are alike, especially girls with good grades, who suffer the most. Even preschoolers, such praise can harm them.
The Stanford experiment reveals: Parents who say "you are awesome" every day cannot raise promising children
Praises like "you are so smart!" and "you are awesome!" , is the mantra of almost every parent.
It starts when the children are still young: crawling for the first time, walking for the first time, talking for the first time, and eating independently for the first time. The adults seem to be unable to hide their joy and blurt out praises: " You are great!”
This kind of untargeted praise will give children a short-term motivation, but in the long run, children will not know what they have done well and will only blindly seek praise from others. recognized. Over time, this is no longer a compliment, but a "praise".
I heard a parent tell me this story before:
A mother in the same community as him always praised her child as the best. The child is very imaginative in painting, and the picture conception is also very clever. The mother will only say: "My son is the best!" When the child jumps on the steps with his friends in the sports field, she will say: "Baby, you are so awesome!" After finishing all the cooked meals, she would say: "That's great!" Over time, the child became more and more seeking for her mother's praise. Every time she did something, she would ask her mother: "Am I great?" Moreover, in Under the mother's excessive praise, the child begins to become complacent, thinking that he is the best and cannot tolerate any criticism from his parents.
Inappropriate praise and a large number of flattering words can easily make children praise themselves too highly and become intoxicated with their parents' praise. Then the children will naturally go out of their way to protect their "awesomeness" and "smartness". Avoid challenges. When they face difficulties, they are more likely to shrink back, lack confidence, and may easily choose to give up.
Over time, no matter what children do, it is not because they want to do it or like to do it, but because they can get praise from their parents. As a result, children are particularly concerned about what others think of them. Over time, they lose their basic ability to distinguish right from wrong and their self-awareness.
Positive affirmation is never a simple "you are great", but a big project that tests parents' attentiveness, patience and wisdom. Try changing your approach and do this:
Praising behavior does not praise IQ
"You are so smart" and "You are awesome" are praises for IQ. Over time, they will It will make my children think that I am really smart, but what can being smart bring to my children? Being smart cannot guide any behavior of a child, but may prevent the child from working hard. Therefore, we should praise children for specific behaviors:
"Your composition scores very high because you are cleverly conceived and write very seriously!"
"You got up earlier today than yesterday. 5 minutes, getting more and more diligent!"
"Your team worked well together in the group PK match just now, keep up the good work!"
When we praise specific behaviors, the children You will do specific behaviors better and better and become more and more confident.
Praise the process but not the result.
The result is a fait accompli, and the process of forming the result has guiding significance for future children's behavior.
For example, if your child gets the first place in the class this time, we need to understand how the child got the first place in the class. He completes his homework carefully, carefully organizes the wrong question book, and strengthens it during review. He corrected his wrong questions and wrote neatly in the draft during the exam... These are all processes that helped him achieve good results.
Only by continuously strengthening the process will children continue to do this in the future, which is more important than the result.
More encouragement can make children stronger
On the road of life, what children need is not general praise, but encouragement at any time, especially when they encounter difficulties.
Psychologist Rudolf Drex said: "Children need encouragement, just like plants need water. Without encouragement, the child's character cannot develop healthily, and the child will not have a sense of belonging. Encourage children It is a continuous process, and the focus is on giving children self-esteem and a sense of accomplishment.”
Yin Jiaojiao, the first-year English teacher at Xueersi, encourages the children in this way:
Jiaojiao. The teacher pays great attention to the recitation of words, and will examine about 30 words in each class. At the beginning, many children in the class were afraid of difficulties and were unwilling to memorize words. They could only study five or six words in each test. Some children even stopped wanting to take English classes because of this. When encountering this situation, Teacher Jiaojiao first gives everyone affirmation. Even if they get one word right, she will tell the children: "Even if you get one word right, it means you have recited it!" Then she sets different stages according to the child's mastery level. Sexual goals, for example: for a child who has learned 5 words this time, she will encourage the child: "Keep up the good work, the teacher hopes you can learn 10 words next time"; for a child who has learned 10 words this time, she will encourage the child next time Aim for 15. He also told the children that everyone's English foundation is different. Don't compare yourself with others and give up on yourself. You must compare yourself with yourself. After persisting in this way for a while, the children in the class got more and more correct words when examining the words, which also effectively improved the children's self-confidence.
"Praise behavior but not IQ", "praise process but not results" and "encourage more" are the educational concepts that Xueersi has always adhered to. Appropriate positive feedback can help children improve their self-confidence and motivate them to do better.