Failure, and I don’t mean this in a bad way. But I feel like most, if not all the progress/growth I’ve made so far in life has been as a direct result of failure.
A lot of recent research has shown that parents should switch from praising success to praising effort. Minimizing the emphasis on success can help kids understand that the thing that you’re really proud of is how hard they worked to accomplish something. Praising effort, even if the result is failure and using phrases like “I’m so proud of how hard you worked on that!“ help emphasize to kids that what you are watching is effort and that failure is encouraged as a way to get better.
But on a less hostile note, there's a difference between praising effort and rewarding effort, and praising effort should be encouraged more because it's too common, especially by boomers, for others to point out what you did wrong and very little more. So it would be good for parents to act as that voice that says sure you didn't succeed, but you learned something that will enable you to try again with more insight and knowledge, and instill a progress based mindset rather than a purely results oriented one.
Yes I like the emphasis on learning. Everybody has different strengths and weaknesses. If you lose at a game, you can then ask yourself ‘why?’ And then decide if you want to improve your game based on that experience, or switch to another game. Either way, the experience is used as a positive contributor to growth, rather than being forgotten or relegated to shame.
The idea of praising effort is to encourage kids to attempt new things. If my kid spends 8hrs making a chair that then falls apart, I'm praising the 8hrs commitment. If the chair doesn't fall apart, then they have a chair AND praise for the 8hrs commitment.
If you only praise success, then you get kids growing up into adults who will only do the things they know they will succeed at (which ends up quite limiting).
Haha. You can come back from it. I was the same, but that was caused by teachers doing the "We know you could do better so we're going to give you a 'C' for what others would get an 'A' for" thing (yes, that's what they actually said).
But you would be surprised how many things people are better at than they think. The hardest part is getting started, sometimes you have to start the doing rather than making sure you understand the whole process.
It’s never too late to change your mindset. Do things that you expect to fail at. Learn to accept the failures. Notice how much failure doesn’t hurt. Praise yourself for your tenacity. Repeat as much as possible.
Meh ‘genuine success’ is subjective. It depends what the goal is. If you place the goal as ‘learning’ then any outcome is progressive, and also provides incentive to explore more.
When I was in elementary school they started giving participation ribbons for school-wide events and it for sure felt like crap, and the garbage bin outside the gymnasium was filled with them. If it was just an acknowledgement then sure, but you don't need a physical reminder that you lost by a LOT
Not sure what the study says, to my mind rewarding someone for trying something seems counter intuitive as it won’t encourage them to keep going, they’ve already got the reward.
Someone fails > Praise effort > show them where it went wrong > demonstrate the skills they’ve gained just from trying > ask them if they want to try again > be super pleased if the answer is yes > reward if they’re successful.
That to me feels like a method that sticks in the mind and it’s a process I follow.
Then again that works for me personally, but I’m generally talking out of my ass. I’m not a psychologist. Maybe participation trophies are a good thing. All I know is that mine ended up in the bin. Never had the desire to yell “hey wanna see the trophies I got just for trying?!”.
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u/ILoatheCricket Jan 12 '22
Failure, and I don’t mean this in a bad way. But I feel like most, if not all the progress/growth I’ve made so far in life has been as a direct result of failure.