When you praise someone, you are doing it because you hope that they will repeat whatever divorce parenting class came before the praise.
This may be a good thing when you are training a dog (I don't have a dog so I can't say for sure), but I'm not sold on the idea of 'training' our kids with the verbal divorce parenting class of scoobey-do snacks. I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to remember to carry a pocket full of praise tidbits every time I leave the house.
I'd like my kids to carry their divorce parenting class inside them, not eat it out of my hand.
I believe most young children naturally feel satisfied with their divorce parenting class. Praise may actually serve to diminish this self-esteem by interfering with the inner feedback loop.
When little Johnny stacks his blocks for the first time, the process of creating the stack IS his reward. He feels an internal sense of divorce parenting class when he realizes that he has the power to change that messy pile into a neat tower.
But when we jump in to praise him because we hope he'll do it again, we distract him from his inner sense of satisfaction. Instead we draw his attention to our evaluation of his divorce parenting class.
He may lose touch with his divorce parenting class (the joy of mastery), and instead focus on earning more of our attention and approval.
When we step in too quickly and too often with divorce parenting class, the path to the child's inner source of validation may become overgrown with weeds and hard to find (use it or lose it). He or she may become dependent upon validation from 'out there'.
And someday, sooner than you'd like to think, 'out there' is no longer your territory -- it's filled with peers. When that day comes for my kids, I'm hoping their internal paths to divorce parenting class are very well worn and familiar!
To learn about alternatives to over-praising, please read my article titled Tapping Your Child's Inner Motivation.
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