How to encourage and praise your child without judgment

Carol Dweck, PhD Psychologist and Author, shares advice for parents on how to praise and encourage their child without making the child feel judged by them.
How To Encourage And Praise Your Child Without Judgement
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How to encourage and praise your child without judgment

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Would you be surprised if your child said they felt judged by you? You would say "Oh no, I praise them all the time. I tell them how great they are". That's judging. You are putting them in a mode where they feel judged, even when it is positive. And then they worry gee if they didn't live up to your expectations, you would secretly judge them negatively. That's a heavy burden for a child to take. So what should you do if you want to encourage them? You should appreciate what they do, you should encourage what they do. You can praise the efforts they make and the strategies they use and the choices they make and the hard tasks that they take. And that's not judgement, that's appreciation.

Carol Dweck, PhD Psychologist and Author, shares advice for parents on how to praise and encourage their child without making the child feel judged by them.

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Carol Dweck, PhD

Psychologist & Author

Carol S. Dweck, PhD, is a leading researcher in the field of motivation and is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford. Her research focuses on why students succeed and how to foster their success. More specifically, her work has demonstrated the role of mindsets in success and has shown how praise for intelligence can undermine students’ motivation and learning.

She has also held professorships at and Columbia and Harvard Universities, has lectured to education, business, and sports groups all over the world, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the National Academy of Sciences. She recently won the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, the highest award in Psychology. 

Her work has been prominently featured in such publications as The New Yorker, Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, and The London Times, with recent feature stories on her work in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post, and she has appeared on such shows as Today, Good Morning America, NPR’s Morning Edition, and 20/20. Her bestselling book Mindset (published by Random House) has been widely acclaimed and has been translated into 20 languages.

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Transcription: 
Would you be surprised if your child said they felt judged by you? You would say "Oh no, I praise them all the time. I tell them how great they are". That's judging. You are putting them in a mode where they feel judged, even when it is positive. And then they worry gee if they didn't live up to your expectations, you would secretly judge them negatively. That's a heavy burden for a child to take. So what should you do if you want to encourage them? You should appreciate what they do, you should encourage what they do. You can praise the efforts they make and the strategies they use and the choices they make and the hard tasks that they take. And that's not judgement, that's appreciation.