To Praise Or Not To Praise
Picture this: Our child brings us a piece of paper they rushed to mark with every single color crayon they could find for us to look at and be impressed by. Or they can’t stop saying “look at me! Look at me!” while they’re jumping half an inch off the floor. We’ve all been there. As if our attention is a necessary ingredient for the completion of that task. So what are we supposed to do? And what if they’re doing something that we’d like to encourage them to keep doing? They’re eating their vegetables, or practicing pre-writing skills like tracing lines on paper or sand tray, how do we keep them going other than saying “good job”? If we’re walking by them, pause for a moment to observe the task they are working on, and then continue to walk past them without a word, would they not notice that and stop what they’re doing because they would feel unappreciated?
“Good job!” It’s a go-to, catch-all kind of phrase with almost endless applications. “Good job! You finished all your vegetables!” or “good job! You built a scale model of the International Space Station with your Legos and you’re not even 2 yet!” Or just “good job” without even looking up to buy ourselves some time to finish drafting that work email when we hear a little voice from behind the screen saying, “look at me! Did you see that?!” No, we did not, but that’s besides the point.
It can be a hard habit to break. It’s awkward to observe someone doing something truly impressive, or something they believe to be truly impressive, (or even something everybody involved knows is not impressive, and everybody knows that everybody else knows they know) and not say something encouraging. But breaking this habit is worth the effort. Why? Two words: Intrinsic Motivation.
Intrinsic motivation is an amazing thing. Think of it this way: You sit down to read a book because you enjoy reading it, in fact, you’ve been looking forward to it all day. You go to the gym because you love the way it makes you feel. You clean your house because you feel relaxed when your environment is clean and organized. You weed your garden because you love to see your herbs and vegetables flourishing. Now imagine these scenarios instead: You read a book because you’re going to be tested on it. You begrudgingly go to the gym so you can post a selfie on your social media and get lots of likes. You clean your house because judgmental family members are coming over and you don’t wanna give them any more ammo than they already have. You weed your garden to get the HOA off your back. Even though the tasks are the same, those experiences feel vastly different.
All too often, children have a barrage of extrinsic motivators in their lives: from the seemingly positive external incentives like verbal praise, sticker charts, and grades, to more negative reinforcements like punishments, time outs, and verbal reprimands.
Alfie Kohn, author of Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes, explains how incentives can seem to work in the short run, but that the strategy ultimately fails and can even cause lasting damage.
For example, Mary Budd Rowe, from the University of Florida, found that students who were generously praised by their teachers responded to questions in an unsure voice, backed off from an idea as soon as an adult disagreed, were less likely to persevere with difficult tasks, and didn’t regularly share ideas with peers. Joan Grusec, from the University of Toronto, discovered that young children who received frequent praise for displays of generosity tended to be slightly less generous on an everyday basis than other children were.
“...children who received frequent praise for displays of generosity tended to be slightly less generous on an everyday basis...”
Likely this backsliding happens because every time children hear “good sharing” or “good job” the actions they were doing become something that aren’t important in their own right, rather their actions become a means to an end: getting praise. The actual value of the action becomes usurped by the adult response. In addition to creating praise junkies, we can actually rob children of the opportunity to have satisfaction and meaning because of what they have done. When we doll out external motivators, we encourage children to look to adults for approval or attention. They share their toy, then run to us announcing, “I shared.” Or even worse, they throw their bodies onto that of an unsuspecting and unconsenting little friend in an attempted hug, and look back at us with a forced smile, waiting for the “awww” and a snapped picture before they release the other child from the unwelcome hold of affection.
It’s a common misunderstanding that Montessori discourages praise. Instead, Montessori is very intentional about fostering intrinsic motivation. We recognize that intrinsic motivation is nurtured when praise is given in a sincere and authentic manner. Children can sense when praise is insincere or exaggerated, which may lead to a decrease in their motivation. When a scribble that took two minutes gets the same degree of praise as the masterpiece that took almost an hour for them to complete, our praise will seem disingenuous and lose its meaning. Therefore, it is crucial for adults to provide genuine praise that is based on accurate observations and is focused on the process instead of the outcome. So, when looking at a finished project they are proud of, instead of saying “good job,” we can ask questions that help them to think of the process and show that we appreciate the effort they put in and are interested in why they chose to do it the way they did. Some examples might be:
“Hmmm…Looks like you were very careful with the colors you chose. Can you tell me more about your drawing?”
“I noticed you were working very hard on coloring. Do you enjoy doing art?”
“I see your Lego sky scraper has a wider base, why did you think to give it a wider base and a narrower top?”
“You invited your friend to play. Did you notice how happy she was when you did that? How did that feel to YOU?”
“ Eventually, our children go from doing things they enjoy that happen to be captured by by cameras for other people to see, to doing things regardless of enjoyment only because they believe that’s what others want to see.”
Most often that not, praise is not even needed. If we walk past a child working on something, not only would a verbal praise snap them out of their concentration, it would also change the reality of the experience they were having to something that was about them and how it made them feel to how it makes us feel. Similarly, when they’re doing something adorable and we immediately take out our phones to capture the moment, what inevitably happens is that they go from doing the thing they were enjoying to wanting to see what the captured photo or video looks like. This has the same affect as unnecessary praise, it changes the internal bodily locus of the experience to the external “what do I look like to the world when I do that?” Eventually, our children go from doing things they enjoy that happen to be captured by by cameras for other people to see, to doing things regardless of enjoyment only because they believe that’s what others want to see.
Our babies didn’t crawl because we praised them, they did it because they had the intrinsic desire to be more mobile and explore their world. They didn’t start speaking because we got violently excited at every babble that even remotely resembled language, they learned to speak because they were born with the intrinsic desire to communicate. We can help them keep this innate drive flourishing by not getting in their way with extrinsic and, ultimately, unfulfilling forces.
