How To Praise Your Kids Last reviewed on January 3, 2010 By
Claire McCarthy, M.D. As parents, we're supposed to praise kids
because it boosts their self-esteem and helps them achieve,
right? Maybe not. According to some recent studies, the answer
depends on how you praise kids. Carol Dweck, PhD, a psychologist
at Stanford University, studied praise and its effect on
children when she was at Columbia University in New York City.
She and her colleagues randomly divided 400 5th graders from New
York City public schools into two groups. The students were
taken out of the classroom individually and given a relatively
easy series of puzzles to do. When they were finished, one group
of students was praised for intelligence and told, "You must be
smart at this," while the other group was praised for effort and
told, "You must have worked really hard." Then the students were
given a test to take. They could choose one that was either
harder or easier than the first test. Researchers told the
children that if they chos