And today we shall be debating . . .

[Lellow]

I will tell me son all the time how brilliant he is, how well he's doing, how proud i am of him.
I will encourage him to try everything and if he fails at it, i will encourage him to try again and again til he gets it, IF that what he wants.

Building up a self-belief in a child will hopefully ensure they strive to do there very best at everything they do, if there best isnt up to everyone elses standards, then so what, at least he gave it a damn good go.

I see nothing wrong with that parenting style...but i just wont be encouraging to the point of practically forcing things upon him, i want his choices to be those that i support not force.

I will praise effort not the achievement that comes of it.

 

[OmarsMum]

I also think it depends on the child. Dad always encouraged us, but he had high expectations of me but not my brother, but that didnt stop them from encouraging him. If they left him to choose & follow his "dreams" I think he would have ended in the street. He had drinking & addiction issues, eating disorders but they worked so hard & made sure he finished university. My dad also found a good job for him, & paid for his wedding & house. Now at the age of 30, he's a successful banker with a beautiful 2 months old baby & adorable wife.

My middle brother who's 25 now is similar to me, didnt have any problems but my dad encouraged him to use all the potentials he have to succeed & now he's an engineer & with the help of my dad he has his own company.

My youngest brother who's 17 is a nightmare. He's stubborn & out of order most of the time, but again my dad didnt give up, & he still encourages him to finish high school. He's not into studying but he needs to finish school or he will be kicked out of the country & go back home to join the military which is a disaster in a 3rd world country.

We all appraise him when he gets acceptable grades although we dont have much expectations of him, it's working so far & we can see some improvement & hopefully he will pass this year. He doesnt have any skills & he's not good at anything, once he finishes high school DH is going to offer him a basic training job in the perfumes industry as he's interested & we will see how it goes.

With Omar we cheer for him when he learns a new skill or says a new word & he gets excited. I love appraisal & I think Omar is the same. For example, although I cook everyday, I expect everyone to comment on the food while eating & it makes me feel sooo good but I dont really care if they comment negatively & I try to improve the dish next time.

I was always appraised when I was a kid & while growing up, & my parents were always & still proud of me & they talk openly about it. I always have confidence & I do accept criticism with an open mind.

 

[angel2010]

I just read a fascinating book - NurtureShock by Po Bronson, that has a chapter devoted to self-esteem and how telling your child they are brilliant and smart all the time will "ruin them"-lol! No really its fascinating the neurobiological studies he discusses. He advises that in our rush to improve our children's self esteem - we are creating underacheivers. To try to briefly try to sum up - when you praise a childs innate intellegence they take it personally when they fail, they take the failure as a sign they are stupid, they feel things should come naturally to them and then become very stressed out when they encounter a task they are not good at, often causing them to give up. Further more, there is actual circut in the brain for persistence - which strengthens when someone has to overcome something though effort. Children who's EFFORT was praised and not their innate intellegence had much stronger activity in that part of their brain. Children who's effort was praised were more likely to work through problems and enjoy the challenge.

They also found that children can route out too much superfluous praise - and will start not believing any of the praise given them (adults already know this). They have noticed that these days more praise is given to the kids who are NOT good at something and then feel that if too much praise is given to them, that it means they are underacheiving.

So while I am going to encourage my child to do what he wishes to do and be successful at it, we are really trying not to tell him he's brilliant all the time. My husband and I have been trying to say "I like how you tried hard at that" instead of "your such a smart boy" for about 2 weeks now and its REALLY hard, but we hope to perservere and have it down pat by the time he understand us-lol!

Great topic -I love a good debate - bring it on!

That is very interesting, do you have any more examples?

 

[NG09]

I strongly believe you can achieve anything with hard work, determintaion and PMA! That's exactly what I will tell my LO. The sky is the limit!

 

[angel2010]

I'm reading 'Uncondtional Parenting' by Alfie Kohn at the moment. VERY interesting reading on this subject! I don't know if anyone here has read it but it's definitely leading me more towards not wanting to praise, reward or punish.

Can we please have some more information about this style

 

[angel2010]

Well, after enjoying yesterday's debate (perhaps a little too much !) I thought I would try and find out your views on different parenting styles, in particular the two I am about to mention.

When I was a little girl, I was ALWAYS told I was brilliant and that I could do anything I wanted to do as long as I put my mind to it. My Dad in particular was a firm believer in the pygmalion effect (if you tell someone enough times that they are a certain thing then they will eventually believe it and will start to behave accordingly) and really felt that his constant encouraging and building of his daughters' self belief would have a positive impact on them. And I can honestly say, hand on heart, that it has. I have never been happy to accept second best from myself. If I have found something difficult I have persevered with it and although I haven't always been brilliant at everything, I have always given it a good go. Ironically, I think that it has been this attitude that has led to my absolute disappointment in myself that I failed at breast feeding Frankie.

Anyway, conversely I have a friend who always says she thinks that my dad's style of parenting leads to pressure being put on a child (I never felt under any pressure, as long as I did my absolute best that was enough) and that she won't do this with her children. She will let them choose what they want to do and follow their own paths as much as possible, much as her parents did with her.

Now, I can see both sides of this argument but looking at it properly, and thinking about how both my friend and I have turned out, I'm pretty sure I will be following my Dad's example and encouraging my little boy to aim for the stars.

What do you think? What sort of parents will you be to your LOs?

I think this is a great thread! I guess I haven't even really thought about this aspect of parenting. I think so far we are probably "praisers" (tell Carter he is smart and good a lot). I do look foward to seeing all the replies and different thoughts and methods.

edit: You are not a failure for not being able to breast feed. I am sure you tried your best

 

[Lightworker]

Mum2be_Claire- does he talk about not praising because the child will become reliant on praise from outside sources as opposed to learning to love themselves from within? This is my main worry with praising. Would really love to know

 

[New Mrs W]

Some really interesting points made on this matter. I will certainly be reading the two books mentioned so far as I am very interested in this as a topic. Thanks everyone for your inputs so far! xx

Angel, thank you for your kind words. I did try my best! xx

 

[leelee]

Very interesting thread

 

[aob1013]

My parents were negative, bullying, completely unapproachable and insensitive. We were hit, told we were bad .. i have no good childhood memories and my relationship with them is strained to this day. I was left to CIO from day 1, weaned early totally the opposite of what i do.They are not allowed to be unsupervised with Leni. I was often called thick, stupid, evil, poision, nasty etc as a child and young person and i have had some serious mental health problems following that all, i totally went off the rails for many years. I'm fine now though, but just very aware of them and what they are capable of.

I am a relaxed, go with the flow parent. I breastfeed, co-sleep, baby wear, use cloth nappies and wipes .. we are total attached parents, and it works wonderfully for us. I am fully confident that i am doing the right thing for Leni and that he will grow up an independant, secure and happy child becuase i will attend everyone of his needs.

I want him to love & trust me, and want to talk to me about anything on his Mind. I want to be a Mother to him, but also a wonderful friend. I do not believe what my parents did with me was right. But hey, parenting comes with no manual, so maybe they feel they did their best?

There is no right or wrong way, we are all doing our best

 

[jstarr]

I just read a fascinating book - NurtureShock by Po Bronson, that has a chapter devoted to self-esteem and how telling your child they are brilliant and smart all the time will "ruin them"-lol! No really its fascinating the neurobiological studies he discusses. He advises that in our rush to improve our children's self esteem - we are creating underacheivers. To try to briefly try to sum up - when you praise a childs innate intellegence they take it personally when they fail, they take the failure as a sign they are stupid, they feel things should come naturally to them and then become very stressed out when they encounter a task they are not good at, often causing them to give up. Further more, there is actual circut in the brain for persistence - which strengthens when someone has to overcome something though effort. Children who's EFFORT was praised and not their innate intellegence had much stronger activity in that part of their brain. Children who's effort was praised were more likely to work through problems and enjoy the challenge.

They also found that children can route out too much superfluous praise - and will start not believing any of the praise given them (adults already know this). They have noticed that these days more praise is given to the kids who are NOT good at something and then feel that if too much praise is given to them, that it means they are underacheiving.

So while I am going to encourage my child to do what he wishes to do and be successful at it, we are really trying not to tell him he's brilliant all the time. My husband and I have been trying to say "I like how you tried hard at that" instead of "your such a smart boy" for about 2 weeks now and its REALLY hard, but we hope to perservere and have it down pat by the time he understand us-lol!

Great topic -I love a good debate - bring it on!

buying it

 

[New Mrs W]

My parents were negative, bullying, completely unapproachable and insensitive. We were hit, told we were bad .. i have no good childhood memories and my relationship with them is strained to this day. I was left to CIO from day 1, weaned early totally the opposite of what i do.They are not allowed to be unsupervised with Leni. I was often called thick, stupid, evil, poision, nasty etc as a child and young person and i have had some serious mental health problems following that all, i totally went off the rails for many years. I'm fine now though, but just very aware of them and what they are capable of.

I am a relaxed, go with the flow parent. I breastfeed, co-sleep, baby wear, use cloth nappies and wipes .. we are total attached parents, and it works wonderfully for us. I am fully confident that i am doing the right thing for Leni and that he will grow up an independant, secure and happy child becuase i will attend everyone of his needs.

I want him to love & trust me, and want to talk to me about anything on his Mind. I want to be a Mother to him, but also a wonderful friend. I do not believe what my parents did with me was right. But hey, parenting comes with no manual, so maybe they feel they did their best?

There is no right or wrong way, we are all doing our best

Sounds like you had a bit of a tough upbringing aob I'm sure your LO will grow up happy and secure because of what you're doing for him.

Also just noticed on your signature that you're training to be a breast feeding peer councillor - good on you xx

 

[Murphy98]

Thanks Angel, another example....cites a series of studies done by Carol Dweck at Columbia University,

"Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control, they come to see themselves as in control of their success" where as "Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child's control and provides no good recipie for responding to a failure".

For example she gave 5th graders a series of puzzles to complete - they could choose which puzzles they wanted to do. Of the students who were praised for their effort 90% chose the harder set of puzzles. Those praised ony for their intelligence chose the easy tests every time. The kids were then all given the same difficult puzzle with no choice and predictably, everyone failed. But the kids praised for their effort assumed they simpy hadn't focused hard enought on the test and became very involved trying every solution and remarked unprovoked that this was their favorite test. The kids who were praised for innate intelligence assumed that it was a sign they weren't really smart at all and were observed to find the testing very stressful.

The kids were given a final test that was easy to do like the initial puzzles - the effort group significantly improved on thir score by about 30%, while the "smart" group did even worse then they had at the beginning.

The studies agree that praise is a powerful motivational tool - but this book encourages us to be more SPECIFIC in our prase and honest too - so instead of a ubiquitous "that was great" after a soccer game, try "I like how you passed the ball and shared" - that kind of specific praise encourages a specific behaviour and doesn't tell our children what they are - which they can decide for themselves.

Don't even get me started on the chapter on "why classic stratigeis to promote truthfulness just encourage kids to be better liars".......its a good challenging read

 

[aob1013]

My parents were negative, bullying, completely unapproachable and insensitive. We were hit, told we were bad .. i have no good childhood memories and my relationship with them is strained to this day. I was left to CIO from day 1, weaned early totally the opposite of what i do.They are not allowed to be unsupervised with Leni. I was often called thick, stupid, evil, poision, nasty etc as a child and young person and i have had some serious mental health problems following that all, i totally went off the rails for many years. I'm fine now though, but just very aware of them and what they are capable of.

I am a relaxed, go with the flow parent. I breastfeed, co-sleep, baby wear, use cloth nappies and wipes .. we are total attached parents, and it works wonderfully for us. I am fully confident that i am doing the right thing for Leni and that he will grow up an independant, secure and happy child becuase i will attend everyone of his needs.

I want him to love & trust me, and want to talk to me about anything on his Mind. I want to be a Mother to him, but also a wonderful friend. I do not believe what my parents did with me was right. But hey, parenting comes with no manual, so maybe they feel they did their best?

There is no right or wrong way, we are all doing our best

Sounds like you had a bit of a tough upbringing aob I'm sure your LO will grow up happy and secure because of what you're doing for him.

Also just noticed on your signature that you're training to be a breast feeding peer councillor - good on you xx

I'm partly an asshole down to my personality though, so i can't blame my parents for everything

Thank you, i'm loving it xxxx

 

[Lightworker]

aob13- yikes thats one heck of a childhood. I would just love to squeeze you right now because you sound so lovely and it shows such strength of character to still be a great mom even though you experienced such a negative upbringing. My kind of girl xxxxx

 

[Mrs Doddy]

I'm going to encourage jess loads and make her feel like she can do things - I never got any encouragement and even when I did something good I got told I could have done better- I don't feel there was much affection - I never went to uni as I didn't think. Was good enough and have real self esteem issues and have a crap job, I am never going to be like this with my daughter

 

[angel2010]

Thanks Angel, another example....cites a series of studies done by Carol Dweck at Columbia University,

"Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control, they come to see themselves as in control of their success" where as "Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child's control and provides no good recipie for responding to a failure".

For example she gave 5th graders a series of puzzles to complete - they could choose which puzzles they wanted to do. Of the students who were praised for their effort 90% chose the harder set of puzzles. Those praised ony for their intelligence chose the easy tests every time. The kids were then all given the same difficult puzzle with no choice and predictably, everyone failed. But the kids praised for their effort assumed they simpy hadn't focused hard enought on the test and became very involved trying every solution and remarked unprovoked that this was their favorite test. The kids who were praised for innate intelligence assumed that it was a sign they weren't really smart at all and were observed to find the testing very stressful.

The kids were given a final test that was easy to do like the initial puzzles - the effort group significantly improved on thir score by about 30%, while the "smart" group did even worse then they had at the beginning.

The studies agree that praise is a powerful motivational tool - but this book encourages us to be more SPECIFIC in our prase and honest too - so instead of a ubiquitous "that was great" after a soccer game, try "I like how you passed the ball and shared" - that kind of specific praise encourages a specific behaviour and doesn't tell our children what they are - which they can decide for themselves.

Don't even get me started on the chapter on "why classic stratigeis to promote truthfulness just encourage kids to be better liars".......its a good challenging read

Thank you, I do think I will be buying this one!

 

[leelee]

My parents were negative, bullying, completely unapproachable and insensitive. We were hit, told we were bad .. i have no good childhood memories and my relationship with them is strained to this day. I was left to CIO from day 1, weaned early totally the opposite of what i do.They are not allowed to be unsupervised with Leni. I was often called thick, stupid, evil, poision, nasty etc as a child and young person and i have had some serious mental health problems following that all, i totally went off the rails for many years. I'm fine now though, but just very aware of them and what they are capable of.

I am a relaxed, go with the flow parent. I breastfeed, co-sleep, baby wear, use cloth nappies and wipes .. we are total attached parents, and it works wonderfully for us. I am fully confident that i am doing the right thing for Leni and that he will grow up an independant, secure and happy child becuase i will attend everyone of his needs.

I want him to love & trust me, and want to talk to me about anything on his Mind. I want to be a Mother to him, but also a wonderful friend. I do not believe what my parents did with me was right. But hey, parenting comes with no manual, so maybe they feel they did their best?

There is no right or wrong way, we are all doing our best

Sounds like a very tough childhood

I admire the fact that you are breaking the cycle. My Mum broke the cycle with us and while she didn't always get it right with me (I'm the eldest) I always felt secure, loved and encouraged.

 

[New Mrs W]

Thanks Angel, another example....cites a series of studies done by Carol Dweck at Columbia University,

"Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control, they come to see themselves as in control of their success" where as "Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child's control and provides no good recipie for responding to a failure".

For example she gave 5th graders a series of puzzles to complete - they could choose which puzzles they wanted to do. Of the students who were praised for their effort 90% chose the harder set of puzzles. Those praised ony for their intelligence chose the easy tests every time. The kids were then all given the same difficult puzzle with no choice and predictably, everyone failed. But the kids praised for their effort assumed they simpy hadn't focused hard enought on the test and became very involved trying every solution and remarked unprovoked that this was their favorite test. The kids who were praised for innate intelligence assumed that it was a sign they weren't really smart at all and were observed to find the testing very stressful.

The kids were given a final test that was easy to do like the initial puzzles - the effort group significantly improved on thir score by about 30%, while the "smart" group did even worse then they had at the beginning.

The studies agree that praise is a powerful motivational tool - but this book encourages us to be more SPECIFIC in our prase and honest too - so instead of a ubiquitous "that was great" after a soccer game, try "I like how you passed the ball and shared" - that kind of specific praise encourages a specific behaviour and doesn't tell our children what they are - which they can decide for themselves.

Don't even get me started on the chapter on "why classic stratigeis to promote truthfulness just encourage kids to be better liars".......its a good challenging read

Thank you, I do think I will be buying this one!

This is great. As a primary school teacher, praise is a big part of my job but for it to be of any real use it has to be specific. So, I will never mark a book and write, "A good piece of writing." I would write, "I liked how you used speech marks well in your story and how you used some strong adjectives such as . . . ." We will also always follow praise with a "Next time . . ." comment so that the children always know what to do to take their learning to the next step. The benefits from doing this are huge, as the children have the buzz of being told what they have done well, and therefore are more prepared to rise to the challenge set for them. TBH, I hadn't thought of doing this with my own child, maybe because he's so little still but having seen the effect it has on my children in school I will certainly use this approach with my own little man.

 

[vaniilla]

I dont think we have particular style of parenting and I think a lot of the way we do things happens progressively as our kids grow and their needs change, the main thing for me is for our Kids to feel comfortable talking to us and to not feel like they have crazy expectations,

when we were growing up we had a sort of good guy bad guy thing going on, my dad is and was a very high earner as he loved to keep reminding us all mainly my mum who as far as he's concerned head chef isn't a real job and it was always her fault if we did anything bad as she's "done nothing with her life" apparently , he never directed anything at us, as far as he was concerned he was paying for our schooling and health care and therefore wouldn't need to do anything else he never took us places, he probably couldn't even tell you the name of any of the schools I went to I don't want my kids to believe in stupid stereotypes like my dad, "oh they're girls what can I do, if I had sons you would see how well they would be doing but they're taking after you" btw I'm on the gifted and talented list for the UK, I've won surrey debating awards many times, always gotten great grades but there was always something or another that was never good enough, I don't think I've heard him say well done once, or sorry he admits he's incapable of saying it so for me how I parent is only important as far as raising independent happy children,

sorry its a bit of a rant but I don't shut up when I get going