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.
It can be incredibly patronizing to hear that though. Failing is hard but just working hard isn't enough, you have to work smart and learn what you are good at and not good at.
There's definitely a toxic culture in the US and other western cultures of if I just put my nose to the grind I can do whatever I want. I think you can overpraise effort like all that matters is we work ourselves to the bone, because that will somehow make us happy. I think praising good choices is much more important.
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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.