BellaOnline Forums Education Gifted Education how do you praise your children?

children have a sensitive heart to respond for anything reflected to him,and surely our prase makes him grow happily,but how do you express your appreciate benefiting himself to your children?just a few words or other gifts when he or she gets a high grade?

I tell my children every day that I love them, but I do not tend to praise them for grades or scores. I try to place the emphasis on how much they've learned or the effort that they've made. For instance, I might say, Wow, you finished that math course. That took a lot of hard work!" rather than, "Great! You got an A!" It's a subtle difference, but a meaningful one, in my opinion.

(Love that bopping kitty!)

I've heard that a study was done that looked at the effects on kids of different types of praise. The outcome was that kids get more out of specific praise rather than general. In the study, they gave separate groups of kids a task to perform. After successfully completing the tasks, some groups were told that the teacher was "proud" of them; others were told that their work had been really good. The ones that received the feedback about their work being good supposedly performed better on the next tasks.

It makes sense, doesn't it, that kids need the specifics on what they're doing right. (Probably not just kids need this!) Anyway, I think it's important to be specific and sincere. Make sure your praise is for something that truly took some work or skill. Kids pretty much know if we're just trying to make them feel good.

I completely agree, Lorel and cela. Meaningful praise is specific and unique to one child for a particular reason. Children definitely remember hearing "The careful detail and descriptive language you put into your original story really impressed me. This line: 'my stomach turned somersaults as I ascended onto the stage' was fantastic!" versus "I loved your story! Good job!"

eh...seems feasible,thanks for feedback,
i believe moral encouragement is very essential,but do you think it can take place of gifts when their other buddies're all awarded?

Schumi-

Are you saying that your child's friends tend to get paid in goods or cash for their grades? That can be a tough situation, but ultimately, it is up to each of us to parent in the manner that feels most effective for our own family and our personal values. It isn't always easy for the kids to understand, but I feel that in the long run, they will appreciate our efforts.

This could be a good opportunity to teach your child that different families do different things. You could do something different, but more subtle, like go out to eat or to a movie when report cards come out. You could just make it more of a way of signifying the end of a term rather than a reward for grades.

We used to take the kids out to eat when report cards came out. They loved it. We even explained that some families pay their kids for grades but we didn't think that was such a good idea. We gave them other ways to earn money when they were young--washing our cars, helping in the yard, etc.