Is praise always a good thing?

Your 3 year old says a whole new sentence in …. (fill in with your minority language), what do you do? Jump with joy? Open a bottle of champagne? Head for the toy shop to buy him a reward gift?

I bet most parents, like me, would at least be very happy and proud and praise the child, just so s/he knows s/he did a good thing. But actually… is this the best way to go about it?

I started a very light-hearted post, just few thoughts about the importance of praising children for their results, and before I knew I realised I had hit one of the single most critical yet underestimated factors about bilingual education and upbringing: the impact of praise on children’s motivation. There is much more to praise than we might think, and actually praise might not be the smartest way to motivate a child, or an adult for what matters. I think these are very important points, they certainly are for me. I know the reflections I’m doing writing these posts will have a dramatic impact on my parenting style and on A.’s bilingual education. And I think you should all take some time to think about it, and not because I say so, but because some of the brightest minds spent really a lot of time (and money) researching and exploring the dynamics of reward and punishment, so most likely they had some valid points to make.

Who are these minds anyway? People like Thomas Gordon and Maria Montessori to start with.

Thomas Gordon was an American psychologist who developed a model for relationship management based on effective and non confrontational communication. Initially he elaborated a model for optimizing family dynamics and communication, which developed into the Parent Effectiveness Training courses and later in the best seller Parent Effectiveness Training book.  Later the same concepts and techniques have been exported to all areas of communications and relationship management, particularly in professional environments, think topics like team management and leadership and rest assured that they are built on his work. His work had such a major impact that he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times.

There two things I find slightly disturbing about the PET thing: that it is based on the assumption that parenting can and should be taught and that today it is really a big business. That said, these two factors don’t alter the fact that Gordon had some brilliant and powerful ideas, and that familiarizing yourself with his techniques is more likely to make you a better communicator, hence a happier person, parent, friend, professional, name it.

Maria Montessori made a quite but long lasting revolution. She put the child, and the child’s skills and needs, at the center of her pedagogic approach and laid the foundations for a scientific pedagogy, i.e. a pedagogy based on scientific methods and rigour, not on opinions. She brought attention to the importance of freedom (certainly an innovative concept at the beginning of XX century). The child’s freedom according to het is important not only to stimulate and nurture his/her creativity, but also, in less obvious ways, to help him/her gain self regulation and eventually discipline.

So the first interesting thing is that both Gordon and Montessori address the issue of praise (reward) and punishment as one. But one’d normally think they are very different things, aren’t they? Let’s see…

What is Praise?

When a child does a good thing we make sure he knows, we reward him with our praise, we are sincerely happy about his success and share our happiness with him and with others. This way, we think, he’ll feel good about what he has done and will be inclined to do more of the same.

So what is punishment instead? Let’s change few words…

When a child does a bad thing we make sure he knows, we punish him with our disapproval; we are sincerely disappointed about his failure and share our disappointment with him and with others. This way, we think, he’ll feel bad about what he has done and will not be inclined to do more of the same.

Well, there isn’t so much difference between praise and punishment then! Praise and punishment are two sides of the same coin and they share very similar mechanisms. I had never thought about it and I personally find the idea quite shocking, or at least thought provoking. Because I was under the impression that punishment is bad and praise is good. But if they are so similar may be their effects are similar too and I have to reconsider my assumptions (and trust me, I am).

I want to explore this topic in depth, and I will do it on the next few posts so if you want to receive them just click here.

BILINGUALISM STEP BY STEP

This is thinking time more than action time, and I would encourage you to spend some time thinking about these issues to, because you can’t overestimate the importance of praise and reward in children’s education, and in bilingual education specifically.

So today’s homework is to spend some time to think about what impact praise has on YOU, not on your children.

Have you ever been praised and:

• Felt embarrassed or annoyed?
• Felt they were making fun of you?
• Didn’t believe what you were hearing?
• Had a poor opinion of the person who was praising you?
• Felt pressure to deliver or perform above your abilities and capabilities?
• Felt manipulated?
• Thought there was no need to put more effort given that what you had done was already good enough?

If you answered yes to at least one of these questions you start to see that praise can have drawbacks too. We’ll see later all the pro and contras and how subtle changes can make our praise more effective, in all senses. To receive the updates click here.

Picture by annthrop

Related posts: