Over-Praising a Child Affects Performance Negatively - New StudySuggests

     

                        Photo credit: stanfield.com

If you compliment your child(ren) too often, you may actually be doing more harm than good.

A new study suggests that over-praising a child, especially one with low self-esteem, may actually yield he undesired result.

It states that when adults shower children with compliments to try to boost their self-esteem, it has the opposite effect, sending the message that they must continue to meet very high standards and discouraging them from taking on new, confidence-boosting challenges, lest they fail.

"Giving inflated praise is well-intended," study author Eddie Brummelman, a doctoral student in psychology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. "Yet, it can backfire in those children who seem to need such praise the most -- children with low self-esteem."

"The idea is that children who have low self-esteem are more anxious about maintaining a high level of praise. They're less likely to believe that they'll be praised again when praise is excessive, so they start to choose easier tasks," explained Dr. Steven Meyers, a professor of psychology at Roosevelt University and a Chicago-based clinical psychologist.

"In general, children with low self-esteem are more risk adverse because they fear failure," he continued. "This can be triggered by parents who use excessive praise."

The challenge, Meyers said, is knowing where "appropriate" praise ends and inflated praise begins.

"Parents have to ask themselves, 'How hard was my child actually trying when he did this behavior?' If they weren't trying hard or developing a new skill, the praise should be shorter," he said.

Parents should also pay close attention to what happens when they praise their child. They may observe that compliments result in their child's "pulling back" because the praise creates stress. Instead, parents should learn to narrate what their child is doing to demonstrate they are paying close attention, without defaulting to unnecessary and excessive praise.

"Parents just want to do right by their kids," Meyers said. "It's counterintuitive to think that praise could undercut their accomplishments."