People want to be reassured that they&#x27;re doing the &quot;right thing&quot;, that what they&#x27;re doing is &quot;correct&quot; according to some external source of truth. It&#x27;s no surprise that there&#x27;s this much counterproductive parenting advice (even &quot;praise effort, not results&quot; is merely slightly less bad).<p>Anything other than &quot;pay attention to the actual needs of the child&quot; is probably the wrong direction to go. Like, if you try to praise effort instead of results, you&#x27;re evaluating and judging things rather than searching for their needs. Seriously, though, stop reading and trying to follow parenting advice and pay attention to your goddamn child. Otherwise, you&#x27;ll wind up doing the &quot;right thing&quot;, praise effort, and fail to meet your child&#x27;s actual needs until you&#x27;ve got a suicidal college student saying &quot;well, it looks like I just didn&#x27;t try hard enough.&quot;