My children are perfect. All four of them. Perfect and beautiful and clever. I bet yours are, too. Except, of course, they are not. In reality, my children and yours are likely to be reasonably average in terms of looks, behavior, intelligence and charm. That's why it is called average. Your belief in your child being special is more probably a biological thing than a fact. A loved one, particularly a loved child, is edited as we observe them. Other people's children are spoiled; ours are spirited. Theirs are naughty; ours are confident. This is all natural and even touching when not taken too far. However, it is one thing feeding this idea to ourselves but feeding it to our children may be a little less desirable. We have the idea that -- unlike my parents' generation -- we should build our children's self-respect as high as we can. Therefore, their random scribble   is up there with Picasso, their C-minus is an unfortunate oversight on the part of the teacher, and the fact that no one wants to be friends with them is because they are particularly clever or sensitive. Children see through this kind of thing very quickly and ignore their parents' praises as a matter of course. As they grow up, they sense that the wider world judges them differently. This leads to a - hopefully gentle - cynicism   about anything their parents tell them about their achievements. Perhaps that is OK -- but I'm not sure if it is good for them to have the parental praise so overlooked. If parents were a little _ sometimes, this could have two positive effects -- first, when praise came, it would be more likely to be believed and, second, it would fit in rather more accurately with the picture of reality that the child is forming in their heads. A lot of pressure is put on children who are told they are beautiful, special and perfect. Because then, where is there to go? Only downwards. They become too much aware of their status in your eyes, and a danger must be that they fear failing you. To be over-praised by your parents is the counter side of being criticized all the time. Both can have negative consequences. It is important to give your children the freedom to be flawed   -- to know that it's OK to be imperfect, and that, in fact, we often love people for their flaws -- perfect people (whom we can only imagine, as they do not exist) are easy to respect, but hard to love. Now I am nearly 60, my main insight is that I am much less special than I once believed. This knowledge has actually been helpful in leading a more well-balanced life. I certainly wouldn't like to go back to attitudes that my parents, particularly my father, held, that to praise the child was to "spoil them" or make them bigheaded. However, the history of families is like the history of everything else -- the story of overreactions. We praise our children to the skies, partly because we think it makes them feel good, but also because it makes us feel good. And perhaps it is more the latter than the former. Too much love can be as big a burden as a shortage of it. My advice is to limit your praise. Then every piece of praise will count, rather than being just ignored. Which of the following will the writer most probably agree with?
Children's self-respect shouldn't be parents' major concern. The easiest way to spoil a child is to praise him or her. Perfect people deserve our respect but not our love. Parents should praise their children but not too much.