Acceptance vs Praise

ACCEPTANCE vs PRAISE

What the motivational speaker I mentioned earlier (August 10: "Creating a Positive Self-Image") was missing in his philosophy, was the difference between acceptance and praise. Even between love and praise. Love should be unconditional. The moment you start putting conditions on love, you are trying to control the person you say you love.

“I love you because you are my child,” is the only possible message. There is no hidden agenda here. The child cannot possibly stop being your child, so you can never stop loving them. That is the consistency a child needs, the support the child must have, in order to mature and grow.

“I love you because you are pretty,” or “I love you because you are a great baseball player,” is controlling and, in the end, damaging to the child’s self-esteem. Why? because there is always a second half to those messages. The insecure child, and after all , we are all insecure to some extent, reads the other half of the message. “If I wasn’t pretty/a good athlete, then he wouldn’t love me.” You are creating fear of disproval, which is a great control technique for the authoritarian parent, but doesn’t create children with good self-esteem.

For the adult, unearned praise is the easy way out. It requires no prior knowledge, little time, and no attention. When you look at the picture and say, “Wow, that’s a beautiful doggy!” and the child says, “It’s a squirrel.” How do you feel? Embarrassed. And why should you feel embarrassed? Because you’ve been caught cheating. You have tried for the easy way out, and messed up, and on top of it all, you’re afraid you have hurt the child’s feelings. You probably haven’t, actually. He knows it doesn’t look much like a squirrel, and he’s quite happy to tell you all about it, if you give him the chance. If the child pretends to be hurt, he’s probably already playing your games. Well done. You have started him out on the wrong path at a very young age.

Next Posting: Encouraging high quality in your child's work, without using unearned praise.