fbpx
 
Home / News, Videos & Publications / News / Social Sciences & Humanities /

Is Too Much Praise Harmful to Children?

Is Too Much Praise Harmful to Children?

November 19, 2015

Social Sciences & Humanities

Multiple teen suicides in the same year and area are rare. But Palo Alto has had more than their fair share. Twelve percent of Palo Alto high school students surveyed during the 2013–2014 school year reported having seriously contemplated suicide in the past 12 months. The Atlantic delves into this phenomenon. In the excerpt below, BGU’s Dr. Avi Assor discusses the pressures some teens feel to meet the goals their parents have for them.

The Atlantic — Any well-educated parents are quick to distance themselves from the Tiger Mom. We might admire her children’s accomplishments, but we tend to believe these can be coaxed out of a child through applause, not scolding. In fact, this particular combination of lavish praise and insistence on achievement defines our era of protective, meritocratic parenting.

But it turns out that this combination can be just as hard on a child’s well-being. Dr. Avi Assor, an educational psychology lecturer in BGU’s Department of Education, has studied how parenting affects children’s ability to cope with school pressure.

Dr. Avi Assor

Dr. Avi Assor

Providing praise and love when a child performs especially well can look like healthy parenting, Dr. Assor says, because the parents are giving the child more of a good thing. But if praise comes only when a child succeeds, the child is likely to develop a sense that his or her parents’ affection depends upon good grades, or touchdowns, or mastery of a religious text, or whatever the parents’ priorities might be.

The Israeli high-school students Dr. Assor and his colleagues studied who perceived their parents as showing warmth only when they were acing school were described by their teachers as showing little intellectual interest in subjects that wouldn’t be tested. They felt “deeply hurt” when they got a bad grade.

They had internalized their parents’ priorities, and though they felt conflicted about them, they didn’t quite know how to break free. So in Dr. Assor’s studies, kids identified with statements such as “Sometimes I feel that my need to study hard controls me and leads me to give up things I really want to do” and “I often feel a strong internal pressure to exert control over my negative emotions, even in situations where such control is not necessary.”

The aim of healthy parenting, Dr. Assor says, should not be to shower children only with praise and trophies, or to encourage self-esteem based on no real achievements. It should be to disentangle love from the project of parental or pedagogical guidance. Giving specific, positive feedback about something a child has tried hard at, or critical yet constructive feedback when a child fails, is perfectly appropriate.

“But being warm and nice is a different matter,” he says. “We want to be nice and warm also when our kids do not achieve and when they do not try hard to achieve.” The hope is that, secure in love, a child can experiment more freely and begin to find his or her own voice.

Read the full story on The Atlantic website >>