Why I'll Never Tell My Son He's Smart
I've had mixed thoughts about this over the years. Sadly you only get to raise your kids once, you can't try other scenarios and see of there is a better path.<p>Highly verbal kids, and that is generally kids who read a lot, will be told they are smart whether you do it or not. And if you're child's teachers are telling you how smart they are, and they ask you "Dad, my teacher said I'm really smart, do you think I'm really smart?" You'll have to decide what the narrative is.<p>That said, it's great to reward struggle rather than success and to emphasize that it is through failure that we value succeeding. Everyone I know who shielded their children from failure has struggled later with teaching them how to cope with failure. That isn't scientific of course, just parents swapping horror stories, but it has been highly correlated in my experience. Putting those struggles into the proper light is very important.<p>A less obvious but also challenging aspect of this though is that you must teach your children that natural skillsets don't determine their worth. You are good at maths but lousy at sports? Makes you no better or worse than someone with the opposite levels of skill. That is much harder as kids are always looking for ways to evaluate themselves relative to their peers. If you endorse that you can find yourself inculcating in them an unhealthy externally generated view of self worth.