Why I Stopped Praising My Kids for Hard Work

Recently, parenting experts recommend praising children for hard work instead of stable character traits. But is there a downside to that approach?

Praise and the Self-Esteem Movement

I was raised during the era that has sometimes been called “the self-esteem movement.” Back when I was a kid/teenager (in the late 70s, 80s, and early 90s), high self-esteem was the goal. Parents were encouraged to be generous with praise and positive affirmations. Many well-intentioned parents, who loved their kids and wanted them to feel good about themselves, told their children how smart, beautiful, and talented they were. It started to seem as if these children were praised for everything they did, even ordinary kid things, as if they were extraordinary and special.

Photo by Anna Shvets, pexels

Of course, praise feels good to most of us – who doesn’t enjoy a compliment now and then? But there turned out to be some problems with this method.

Reliance on praise and an emphasis on high self-esteem can backfire, creating a fragile sense of true self-worth, and an overreliance on validation by others. And when the person doesn’t meet society’s expectations to be high achieving, successful, or otherwise special (as will happen sometimes, to all of us), there can be a fall into self-blame and feelings of low self-worth. People can learn to depend on extrinsic reward for motivation, instead of the intrinsic motivation of truly caring about something.

As a result, people can end up eager to please others, or on an endless treadmill of trying to earn the next round of praise, and the next, and the next, and the next. When they don’t get the praise they expect, they may assume there’s something wrong with them and that they aren’t good enough.

Growth Mindset and Hard Work: A New Point of View

Then, along came Carol Dweck and her work on “growth mindset.” Dr. Dweck views intelligence and other personal qualities not as fixed traits, but as abilities that can learned and developed with effort and practice.

The growth mindset stance is to teach our children that they are capable of learning and growing. I appreciate the general concept here, of moving beyond fixed labels, like “you are so smart,” and instead focusing on putting effort into learning something. It’s an important message. As an example, one of my daughters was recently frustrated and discouraged by a hard spelling list. I reminded her that it was her first time seeing the list, and with a little practice she could learn the words. Sure enough, she did!

The concept of growth mindset was translated into one particular piece of advice for parents: Praise your kids for working hard at something, not for their personal attributes. As a parent myself, I have been reminded again and again to praise my children for effort and engagement, instead of their innate abilities. I’ve been not told to praise kids for traits, like “you’re such a talented artist,” or “you’re really good at math,” but instead to focus on their engagement in the process of doing something, as in, “I love watching you work on that art project,” or “I’m so proud of you for studying so hard for your math test!” Framing it this way gives the message that people aren’t inherently either a “great artist/mathemetician” or a “terrible artist/mathmetician” but rather that these are skills they can learn and get better at if they work hard at it.

When my own kids were younger, I generally tried to adopt this stance (although I will admit that I occasionally slipped in a little character trait praise, automatically - it’s hard not to sometimes), and as of this writing I have a hard-working 11-year-old and a hard-working 9-year-old. 

But lately I’ve been thinking about the dark side of praising children for hard work.

The Downside

In my work as a psychologist and writer, I focus on helping adults with burnout and chronic stress. As I’ve delved into the world of burnout, I’ve become more aware of how we live in a culture of “hustle” in which cultural narratives tell us that our worthiness is defined by achievement. Workaholic behavior is too often praised as a virtue and rewarded socially and materially. We are overwhelmed and chronically stressed by work, but struggle with cutting back. Many of us are preoccupied by work, even when we are supposedly taking a break, and we have forgotten how to really rest. We become guilty and self-critical when we aren’t working and achieving.

Kids and teenagers are experiencing epic levels of stress and anxiety recently, driven in part by the pressure they are feeling to achieve - to do well in school, get into a prestigious college, and get a good job some day. I worry that parents in the modern era, who just want to help their kids have secure futures, might be making the situation worse, by inadvertently be giving our kids the message that their worthiness is defined by hard work and achievement. Many parents take their children’s level of “success” (or lack thereof) as an indicator of their own success as a parent - children can become an ego extension of their parents, and parents can become overly invested in their children’s educational and vocational attainment.

Nowadays, I’m afraid that praising kids hard work reinforces that cultural message – the message that we are only “good enough” if we are industrious.

Photo by Pixabay

What I’m Doing Instead

What can parents do to help break this cycle? I’m not sure if there’s a particular “right” way to parent your kid, but I can tell you what I’m doing as a parent. I’m trying to focus on my relationship with my children instead of on praise for either character traits or hard work. I want to teach my children that they don’t have to be high achieving or work hard to be accepted. If they want to work hard at something, it should be because they care about it, not just to please me.

I want to teach them that knowing when to stop, rest, and let something be “good enough” is as important as learning how to work hard. (A lesson I am still working on myself.) And I want them to know that they don’t have to accomplish anything in particular to earn my love — that I appreciate them for the unique humans they are. To slightly rephrase the words of writer Jessica Grose, in her book Screaming on the Inside, I’m trying to focus simply on helping my children feel safe and loved during their childhoods.

It’s hard not to give kids some praise. I still do occasionally, without thinking twice about it, when they do something I feel proud of, like doing well on an important test, performing in a play, or doing something new and hard. I even still praise hard work occasionally - I’m not rigid about it! And I know there are some kids out there who struggle with engaging in schoolwork, for whom praising hard work might be important.

But when I do praise my children, I want it to be mostly for being kind, thoughtful, and decent human beings. I want it to be for telling the truth, coming to me about a difficult problem, or having the courage to speak up about something important.

I don’t think a little praise here and there is going to be harmful, or that parents should stress out too much about the exact words we say. Parenting is hard enough as it is! But it’s worth thinking about the messages we are giving our children about what’s important. We can help to break the cycle of overwork and overemphasis on achievement by focusing on things that matter more.

Resources To Learn More:

*Note: Links to books in this post are tied to a bookshop.org affiliate account for my podcast, Psychologists Off the Clock, which earns a small commission.