by Ms. C. Jones

Created on: February 13, 2009

As parents and educators, we need to take a look at the messages that we are sending to our children. All parents would like to see their children perform well in school and be at the top of the class. For those children that are naturally gifted, how we praise them can have a profound affect on their self-esteem and self-confidence.

There are large numbers of children that are labelled and "smart" and are told this by parents, family and educators from the time they are very young.

We would think that because of all of this praise that the student would flourish and continue to do well in school. Research has shown that the exact opposite is happening. Many gifted children don't want to try new things that they would not automatically succeed at. When things come quickly to gifted children, they tend to do only those things that they are good at. When they are faced with a challenge, many give up automatically. The student is categorizing what he/she can do into things that they are good at and things they aren't good at.

A very important question is: "Why do children who score in the top 10%, lack the confidence to take on routine challenges in school?" A growing amount of research is showing that when children are given the label of "smart", this may be the very cause of underperforming.

Why does this happen? It happens because when we praise children for their intelligence, we are in essence telling them is that they should look smart, don't take risks making mistakes. How do we know that this is true? Psychologist Carol Dweck, from Stanford University, studied this very subject on 400 fifth graders. In her study, she had a researcher take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a number of different puzzles. The puzzles would be easy for all student to do relatively well.

Once the student had completed the test, the researcher would tell the student his/her score, then gave a single like of praise. The students were divided into two groups. One group was praised for their intelligence and the second group was praised for their effort. The following remarks were made :"You must be smart at this" or "You must have worked very hard".

The researcher used a single line of praise to see exactly how sensitive children were. In the next step of the test, students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a more difficult test in which the researchers told the children that they would learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice was to take an easy test like the first one. The results were very interesting. Ninety percent of those praised for their efforts, chose a more difficult test. The smart kids, praised for their intelligence took the easy test and did not want to take on the more challenging one.

Why did this happen? When we emphasize effort, we are giving children a variable that they can take control of. They see themselves as being the ones in control of their own success. When we tell them that they are "smart" we are taking away that control and they equate "smart" with the taking the easy way out and won't take on challenges in order to avoid embarrassment.

The key to successful children lies in parents and educators giving them control over their own efforts and successes, which in turn leads to a good self-esteem and self-confidence.

Source: New York Magazine, 2007.

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