Presence, Not Praise: How to Cultivate a Healthy Relationship with Achievement
Studies have shown that praising a child for being clever does not do good for his or her self-esteem. Often a child will react to praise by quitting. This is interesting to me because I have learned that positive reinforcement is a good thing. I thought that rewarding others for good behavior would help them grow and continue to do good. This article also says that a child might simply repeat the same work and draw the same thing over and over again because that child may feel it is useless to draw something new since he or she always gets praised for drawing the same thing. I can see how this can happen. I see that a child may not be motivated to try something new if that child is not being challenged to do something different.
Written in the article is also that parents are trying so hard to be different from how their parents were that they are giving empty praise to their children which is just as bad as giving out thoughtless criticism. This makes me think that there is no perfect way to be a parent. Your damn if you do and your damned if you don't. I think that parenting may have to be different for every individual child. Children do not all learn the same so maybe one child needs to be treated differently than how his sibling is treated. Parents can try different parenting techniques with their children and see which technique is the best for each child.
In this article Grosz thinks that presence helps to build a child's confidence by indicating that the child is worthy of the observer's thoughts and attention. I completely agree with this. Children need to feel like they matter. They need attention and nurturing. I think if the child does not get this then he or she may begin to act out for attention and then this cycle may continue which is not good.
Personally, I think it is always great to give positive feedback, but then again, every individual is different, so you just have to read other people's body language. Some people do not like negative feedback and might be extra sensitive and there is nothing wrong with that. So, I would say give feedback in a way that the person who is receiving feedback will be comfortable with. I also think that the person giving feedback should also get feedback on how they give feedback from the receiver.
Popova, "Presence, Not Praise: How to Cultivate a Healthy Relationship with Achievement".
I can totally agree with you on the fact that it is good to give positive feedback especially those who deserve it. I also can agree that every individual is different since I have experienced this with many kids in my family and also people my age in school. Personally, I get scared when people ask me to give them feedback since I don't know how they will react if I say something bad about them or point out an area in which they can work in to improve, but I always try my best to say it in the nicest way to not hurt their feelings.
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