Seattle Child Therapy – Thriving Child Blog

Book Recommendation: NutureShock

One of the best, most interesting books I have read in awhile is NurtureShock by Bronson and Merryman. Each chapter pulls together research to discuss a variety of topics including: the impact of praise, the loss of an hour of sleep, why kids lie, intelligence testing in kindergartners, and more.

It is an easy read, and fascinating. I have been telling every parent I meet with to read at least the first chapter, titled: The Inverse Power of Praise. It looks at the impact of praising process (ie good effort) versus outcome (yay you got straight A’s). The short of it is that when children are praised on the outcome, they put out less effort and take less risks – they tend to not try something if there is a chance they could fail.

A common issue I hear from parents in my counseling practice in Seattle, is that their child will give up if something doesn’t come very easily to them. If an activity/lesson/task is hard, or perceived as hard, the child might resist even trying it, or at the first sign of trouble give up completely. Unfortunately this sets up a situation where the child “feels” like they are going to be unsuccessful, and then they are unsuccessful (because they didn’t persist long enough to experience any success), which confirms their first “feeling” that they weren’t going to be successful…and makes them less likely to try the next time they “feel” like their not going to be successful – and if we are praising them on their success, then here we have little opportunity to praise them.  When we can shift our attention to the effort – to their concentration, their planning, – we help take the focus off whether they can “do it” or not, and create success around the effort. I’m not saying it is a magic bullet that over night will turn your kiddo from reserved to a risk taker, but it is an excellent place to start.