Is your kid developing the right attitude about learning and self-improvement?
Studies show that people who adopt a “can do” attitude – people who relish challenges, who believe they can improve themselves with effort and persistence – learn and achieve more.
So it pays to encourage your child to think of ability as a muscle, something you can strengthen with practice. This is called the “incremental” theory of ability, and it stands in sharp contrast with the alternative — the assumption that our abilities are unchangeable, fixed things.
How do we steer kids away from this self-defeating “entity” theory of ability and toward the resilient, achievement-oriented “incremental” theory?
Experiments on kids have suggested that praise makes an important difference. For example, when kids were praised for general superiority (“You’re so smart”) they felt more helpless when confronted by difficult tasks. They were more likely to give up after making mistakes. By contrast, kids praised for their effort and problem-solving strategies remained motivated.
But those experiments measured immediate, short-term reactions to praise in a laboratory setting. What about the long-term? Does the way you praise your child at home have a lasting effect?
A new study suggests that it does. Elizabeth Gunderson and her colleagues tracked 53 American children from infancy to elementary school. The kids were visited at home three times — at 14 months, 26 months, and 38 months — and they were videotaped as they went about their everyday activities with their parents. The parents weren’t told to do anything in particular – just to go about their daily routines. And they didn’t know the study was about praise.
Later, impartial observers scored what sorts of praise the kids got – person praise (“You’re so smart!) or process praise, the sort of praise that emphasizes a child’s effort, strategies, or actions (“Good try!” or “I like the way you did that”).
When the kids were in the 2nd and 3rd grades, they were asked a series of questions about intelligence and behavior. Questions like
“Imagine a kid who believes that you can get smarter and smarter all the time. How much do you agree with him?”
“How much would you like to do mazes that are very easy so you can get a lot right?”
“How much would you like to do math problems that are very hard so you can learn more about doing math?”
“Imagine that a kid you know keeps getting lots and lots wrong on their schoolwork and asks you for your help. What would you say or do?”
The higher the percentage of process praise kids got during early childhood, the more likely kids were to endorse “can do” attitudes when they were in grade school. And the link held even after controlling for other variables — like socioeconomic status, children’s gender, parents’ personal attitudes about ability, and the overall amount of praise and verbal interaction kids got from their parents.
So now, more than ever, we have reason to think that process praise sets kids on the path to success. And there is more to think about: Are we doling out process praise on an equal basis? Or do we treat some kids differently — due to unconscious cultural biases?
Gunderson and her colleagues found that while little boys and girls received the same amount of praise overall, boys got significantly more process praise. And the boys went on to develop more markedly “incremental” views of ability.
So perhaps, without realizing it, some parents are setting up girls for a more helpless, “you’ve either got it or you don’t” mentality. If so, studies like this suggest the remedy…and a lesson we might all profit by.
And for details about the new study, look for the paper in an upcoming issue of the journal Child Development:
Gunderson EA, Gripshover SJ, Romero C, Dweck CS, Goldin-Meadow S, and Levine SC. 2013. Parent praise to 1-3 year-olds predicts children’s motivational frameworks 5 years later. Child Development.
image by John H. White of the Environmental Protection Agency