How should you praise a child so the praise really helps?

Praise is one of the things a parent says most often in a day. So it’s worth knowing which kind helps and which helps less. The point isn’t to praise less, but to praise more precisely.

Is there a difference between “you’re so clever” and “you tried really hard”?#

Yes, and it can be measured. In a classic series of six studies with fifth-graders, children who had done well on a task were praised either for intelligence (“you must be clever”) or for effort (“you must have worked really hard”). Then came a difficult task they didn’t manage well. The children praised for intelligence then persisted less and performed worse than the children praised for effort (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). These were fifth-graders — with younger children the direction is similar (see below), but it can’t automatically be carried over.

Why? Praising a trait quietly says: “You succeeded because of the kind of person you are.” When a failure comes along, the child can easily conclude: “Maybe I’m not that kind of person any more.” Praising effort says: “You succeeded because you did something” — and that can be done again.

Does it matter how we praise even very young children?#

It seems so. Researchers recorded everyday conversations between parents and children aged 14 to 38 months and counted how often the parents praised the process (“you put that together nicely”) and how often the person (“you’re a good girl”). When the children were 7–8 years old, those who had heard more process praise as toddlers were more likely to believe that abilities can be developed through effort (Gunderson et al., 2013). The study involved 53 children and shows an association, not proof of cause — but the direction fits the experiments above.

Can praise be too much?#

It can. In one experiment, children were given either ordinary praise for a drawing (“nice”) or inflated praise (“incredibly beautiful!”). After inflated praise, children with low self-esteem were less likely to take on harder tasks; for children with high self-esteem it was the other way round (Brummelman et al., 2014). The same team followed 565 children aged 7–12: when parents overvalued their child (saw them as more special than other children), this predicted later narcissism; healthy self-esteem, on the other hand, was predicted by parental warmth (Brummelman et al., 2015). In another study, parents’ inflated praise predicted lower self-esteem in children aged 7–11 (Brummelman et al., 2017). These are long-term associations, not an experiment.

In practice: the children who need encouragement most don’t need superlatives. They need to see that someone noticed what they actually did.

What about rewards — stickers, sweets, money?#

A meta-analysis of 128 experiments showed that material rewards promised in advance for an activity a child enjoys for its own sake reduce how much they then choose to do it of their own accord — and more so in children than in adults. Positive verbal feedback, by contrast, increased it (Deci, Koestner & Ryan, 1999). The effect depended on the type of reward and on how motivation was measured.

It’s similar with helping: 20-month-old children who were given a material reward for helping later helped less than children who were given praise or nothing at all (Warneken & Tomasello, 2008). Children help naturally; a reward can turn helping into a “deal”.

This doesn’t mean rewards are always bad — they are used deliberately for dull routines or in specialist programmes. What it does mean is this: for things your child enjoys, or does for other people, it’s better not to promise a reward.

Does it help to teach a child a “growth mindset”?#

Be cautious here. The idea that abilities can be developed is useful, and it fits the studies on praise. But short programmes designed to change a child’s “mindset” have, on average, a very small effect on school results: a large meta-analysis found an average effect of d = 0.05, which was not significant after correcting for publication bias (Macnamara & Burgoyne, 2023). Another team points out that effects vary a great deal between studies and groups of children, and that they may help some children (Burnette et al., 2023). An older review describes weak overall effects, with a possible benefit for lower-achieving pupils (Sisk et al., 2018).

The honest conclusion: praising the process makes sense. Promising that “the right phrase” will improve marks does not.

What can specific praise sound like?#

It helps to be specific (what exactly), truthful (not exaggerated) and focused on what the child can do again.

How our comics work#

In the stories a child creates with our narrator, the hero wins through planning, practice and teamwork, not because they are “the best”. The narrator praises the child’s specific ideas (“the dragon with an umbrella is funny”), not the child as a person, and doesn’t hand out badges or points. It isn’t a miracle method — it’s a way for the story to carry the same principles we describe above.