Where do you stand on the debate surrounding praising children? Do you believe that praising children encourages positive behaviour, or do you think that praising a child too frequently can lead to them becoming a spoiled brat?
One school of thought suggests that effective praise of children can result in your child feeling more valued and will certainly raise their self-esteem and confidence. The majority of mothers would probably agree that children that receive little or no praise will lack confidence and may even resort to attention-seeking behaviour as they crave attention of any kind and at any cost. Certainly, over-praise can also result in a child craving rewards for everything they do; rewarding children with chocolate or showering them with gifts as a means of praising them can also result in quite negative behaviour rather than the positive behaviour that the parent wanted to promote. We as parents must try to strike a balance between over praise and no praise.
We should be specific when giving praise to a young child: “Thank you, Tom for tidying up your toys” is of more value that “Good boy”. You should try to focus the child’s mind on the behaviour that you are praising. They will hopefully try to repeat this behaviour in order to receive the same level of praise, attention and affection. Tell your child when he/she has been kind – catch them ‘being good”. Rewards can be given but should not always be expected by your child. A reward chart is an obvious method by which you can allow your child to monitor his/her own behaviour. The idea behind this reward method is to encourage your child to want to be good and to receive praise. Modelling good behaviour yourself is also a great way for your child to copy your example.
There are, of course, times when your child will misbehave and praise is clearly not appropriate here. While you should not totally ignore poor behaviour, you should not give as much attention to it as you would good behaviour. By doing this you will send the message to your child that only good behaviour deserves attention. When dealing with poor behaviour you could withdraw privileges and say something such as “When you hit your sister it makes her and mummy very upset. Please do not do that again.” Be specific with the behaviour that you do not want to encourage, just as you would with the behaviour you wish to encourage. The child will know exactly what they have done wrong and hopefully will not repeat it again.
Overall, reinforcing the behaviour that you want to encourage and paying less attention to the behaviour that you don’t like is a great way to send a clear message to your child about acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.
If you would like to give your views on this topic, go to the forum. Click on these web links below for more ideas:
Confidence and praise
Dangers of too much praise
Reward charts
