Praise Done Right: How to Encourage Your Child Effectively.
Praising can have both negative and positive impacts on children’s upbringing. Irrelevant to your role, whether you are a parent, guardian, grandparent, sister, brother or teacher, it matters how you express your admiration and compliment to the young generation.
Although we may mistake praising all the time helps them build positive attitude, there's a difference between raising a child with a positive mind set and raising a child to believe that they do not need to work hard on things to achieve their goals.
Consider the 7 types of positive reinforcement.
1. Be Genuine and Sincere
Children can read real from fake than most adults. That’s how you will notice them not wanting to be close to some people while they are very comfortable with others, even with family members. You are also teaching them to fake their own feelings and expression of emotions towards you, as children often imitate the parents. They are more likely to believe in their accomplishments when your praise is genuine and heartfelt.
2. Specific Praise
Identifying the specific things that made them different from others, such as saying something like “the colours that you chose on your drawings makes the picture look brilliant” instead of “great job!”. It allows them to understand why and how they are better and what exactly made them different from others as well as allow them to use those skills to their advantage in the future.
3. Positive Reinforcement
The reason behind praise is to encourage a certain behaviour or action that will end up building good character in young ones and once that is built, they are set for life. Identifying actions and praising them such as, “ You are very kind to help me put away these toys,” or “You’re really a champ to help your brother with his test,” will allow them to identify and be encouraged to repeat such behaviours in different forms of actions.
4. Physical Affection
Touch is one of the most important part of human connection. Positive physical affections such as a hug, wrist to wrist, high-five, pat on the back or a cool handshake between the two of you makes the children feel more affirmed of your words of praise.
5. Encourage Effort
Identify their effort and support them if they have worked hard to promote a growth mindset. One of the worst examples of nurturing is when teachers post their children’s mark on the public board for everyone to see, instead of telling the young ones, “I can see you have worked hard and got these ones correct, I believe with the extra help with both of us working together, you will be able to get all of the questions right next time,” which allows kids to put more effort instead of feeling humiliated and hopeless. Give them credit for trying their best before they give up.
6. Excessive Praising
A genuine praise can’t be overly done which makes them dependant on a reward for every good act or achievement as they get older. There are people currently being affected by negative enforcement at their young age. It makes them feel entitled to everything and causes challenges as adults being dependant on others to always praise them with high expectations to always be rewarded for all of their actions. When it is not received, these adults often feel they are not cared for or loved. This eventually leads to disappointment and resentments in their career and relationships as the real world comes with competitions to perform just to keep your position.
7. Praising Gen Z
Generation Z is a generation who had access to phones and iPads while they were in their diapers and were able to open apps with their tiny finger while adults didn’t know those apps existed within their phones.They tend to believe less in themselves as they see the world around them to be much better than they are while they have grown up comparing themselves to everything through the access of internet, not just grades of their peers in class. Be mindful when praising them digitally, ensuring the comments are respectful and appropriate while respecting their privacy. They tend to know real from fake with greater access to information since young, being a positive role model will go long way than asking them to close their eyes on all negatives at home while preaching them to become a better person and work for a better life for themeselves.
In summary,
positive enforcement should be precise, positive, persistent and progressive depending on the age, ability and experiances of each individual. Some of the key words to use in praise and motivating them are, determined, responsible, creative, ambitious, adaptable, thoughtful, empathetic and independant.
What young generation needs is not just praise but motivation through praise.
