Class member: It talked about how you tell them they are smart. My husband still does that. I had my husband read this article this morning.
Class member: It was apparent in my family that we don’t tell her she is smart, but she is getting it at school and other places. It is starting to isolate her and she won’t try something because she is afraid she is going to fail. She won’t shoot a basketball because she might miss. I’m trying to come at it from a parenting thing.
Class member: My husband is a terrible speller and talks about it all the time. My boys say they are horrible spellers. They say it’s genetic. Parents give their kids an excuse. Everyone can learn. We have to be careful to about speaking about ourselves to.
Class member: My daughter’s 4th grade teacher talks about ‘grit’. Everything is about ‘grit’. That was the turn around for her.
Class member: My 6 year old boy struggles because he twin sister everything comes easy for her. His teacher is focusing on saying ‘you are being resilient. You are working through your challenges.’ He came home with a little award called the ‘resilience’ award. It means I have a hard time, but I tried. My kids have confidence that Mom will still love me even if I fail.
What did you think about the connection of this and self-esteem?
Class member: I liked how it said that the people who exert more effort can sustain longer without praise.
The less we give the more it encourages them to keep going.
Class member: “Emphasizing effort gives the child something they can control.” I thought I am doing this! This week I have tried to be very specific with what she is doing or not doing.
We want them to get this from the inside out and not the outside in.
Class member: I’m really bad at this. I tried really hard to be specific. One day I was really focusing on all of it. My son had vacuumed all the rooms. I thought I had to find something. I noticed that he had overlapped the lines and did a great job. He had to do another room later. I heard him in there saying, “Hey I’m doing the same thing I did in Mom’s room.” He was doing it himself. The atmosphere in the house was totally different. Everyone was happy and it was a light mood.
When you change this up we take competition out and the feeling of contention is gone.
Class member: There was a lot less fighting. I put 2 poster boards on our wall. I put “I am thankful for…” Everyone gets to write things. On the other poster board I wrote “I feel the spirit when…”
Parental withdrawal…what did you learn?
You fall back into ‘social praiser’ like an alcoholic that fell off the wagon.
Class member: ‘What if he makes the wrong conclusion?’ I think we don’t allow ourselves the faith that we can’t control it. My son has struggled a lot with kids and he came home so ‘high’. The kids were telling him he was so good about what he did with football. I started asking him about what he did. I let him talk about all of it. I asked, “Where do you think that came from? He kept saying the other kid. I said ‘Who decided to go out on the field? He kept saying ‘I did.’ I told him that he could get those good days from yourself. Sometimes those comments help remind us, but we need to do it on our own. It just goes back that faith that they can come to the same conclusion. I realize that I have to let him draw his own conclusion.
It takes time to build that character and faith in himself. Your handling of that was amazing. To keep turning it around and helping him see.
Class member: I have an older daughter and a younger son. My daughter it just comes easy for her. I feel like I have to praise my son more because things come easily to her? He will always ask am I reading as fast as her yet? He puts that competition on himself. My daughter puts me in competition with giving praise to her as much as I do to my son. They put themselves in competition naturally.
In that article, it says, “What you want them to feel like they are in power.” Effort is in their control.
To him: “You are exercising your brain. Look at where you are now.” Don’t bring her into it.
To her: “Heavenly Father has blessed you with a lot of gifts. Are you trying your hardest? Imagine where you can be if you put in the effort.”