Setting Criteria to Encourage Excellence

How a Child Earns Praise

It would be easy to suppose that my theory of Unearned Praise means you can't comment on the quality of your child's activities. Don’t make that mistake.

The quality of what the child does is important, and some kind of qualitative feedback is necessary. If the child draws a squirrel that looks more like a dog, and the child is at an age where being able to draw a squirrel is possible, then you need to find an appropriate way to let the child know. Finding a drawing of a squirrel for him to copy is probably a good idea. The child then goes away with several objectives achieved: attention from the adult, acceptance of the work, and a further project to work on, with the expectation of further attention, acceptance and success. Powerful motivation!

If you instead make a big fuss about your mistake, as if this is all about you, and not about the child, then you are sending the message that there is a whole lot of importance in the fact that it doesn’t look like a squirrel. In the future, the child will bring art work to you with hesitation, wondering if he made a mistake. If your intention is to create a good little scholar, who listens attentively to the adult, and then goes away and does exactly what the adult says, no more, no less, then you’re doing fine. Of course, you’re also creating a little paranoid, who is afraid to try anything new, and willing to do anything to hide any mistakes he makes, in order to look good in your eyes.

One of the most brilliant students I ever taught was a girl from an ethnic background that rewards hard work, success, and bowing to authority, especially in women. This poor girl had some difficulty with my assignments at first. She spent a lot of time asking questions about exactly what I wanted, so that she could give it to me perfectly.

It was good for me, as well, because I learned to be more specific as to what truly constituted good work. However, I also encouraged her to take risks, to go one better, to think outside the box. One of my criteria for an “A” has always included, “An element which is extra, creative, and beyond the expectations of the assignment.” This girl learned, over the course of the year, how to make her own choices about assignments, and to think for herself.

Making assignments open-ended, with room for creativity, earned me the reputation with a certain segment of the parent population as being a “less structured” teacher. So the pocket Nazis tended to keep their children out of my classes, and everyone was happy. Except for their children, who missed my tender ministrations, and the chance to learn how to rebel against their parents.

Setting Criteria

What that student forced me to do was to be more careful in setting criteria. Once you have laid out exactly what success looks like, then you can give real praise. If the child accepts the criteria, strives for success, and achieves it, the child gains positive self-esteem, because the success is based on the child's accomplishment, not the adult's response.

This sort of thing is easy in sports. Let's say you want to help your child become a better runner. You figure out between the two of you (and maybe a coach or other expert) what would be a good goal for a time in the 100 metres. The child works towards that goal. When he has achieved it, or even when he has made some steps towards it, then you can praise him.

The Power of Criteria

If you set up criteria for success, and then praise that success, you are creating a very powerful teaching tool

When you compliment a child for the success of any specific deed, you are doing two things: you are giving the child personal approval, and you are reinforcing the power of the criteria you use for the approval.

If you complement someone for cooking a good meal, not only are you telling him that he has done well, but you are sending the message that being a good cook is important. Once again, how you phrase the compliment is important.

It is the difference between “I really like that pie,” and “That pie crust was certainly flaky.” If your praise is based on your own opinon (I like the pie), then the child thinks, “If I want to make Daddy happy, I make pie exactly like that.” So that child will make pies exactly like that until you are sick of them. If your comment is based on criteria, (the flakiness of the crust), then the child knows he has achieved success, and thinks, “I’m a good cook. I make flaky pastry.” Then, hopefully, he will go about learning other things to make him an even better cook.

Criteria and Control: Warning! Dangerous !

If you start setting criteria with your children, you will actually find it more difficult to control them. I mean the “do it because I said so” type of control.

You see, once you lay out the criteria for success, the kids will be able to argue with you about how they are doing, because they know the criteria, and they can see for themselves how they are progressing. This, of course, makes it a little tough on the adult, when these darn kids start arguing with you, but what a great learning experience! For you as well.

If, however, you stay hazy on the criteria, then you can keep control of the situation, because the main criteria for success is not what the child has done, but how you feel about it. This keeps him guessing, and keeps you in charge. It also gives him plenty of practice in manipulating people. Surprise, surprise: the parents who are the most controlling are the ones the most often manipulated by their children. The kids have learned exactly which buttons to push to get Mummy or Daddy to go off on a tangent and forget that it’s the kid who messed up.

Perhaps all this sounds very complicated, and some people are going to be afraid to say anything nice to their children. Don’t let’s get too fanatic about this. You can’t spend all your time worrying that some casual comment to your child is going to warp him for life. After all, saying “I really like that pie,” is a valid response. A major part of being a good cook is knowing what people like.

The trick is to develop habits. If you start by making a carefully-thought-out response once in a while, and suppressing an inappropriate one sometimes, soon you get good at it, and it becomes your standard habit.

Another trick is just improving your attitude. I often tell my students, "Don't do it because I said so. Do it because it's the right thing to do." I sometimes add, "If you don't think it's the right thing to do, we had better talk about it."

Tell your children this a few times, and listen to yourself carefully. Soon you'll start believing it.

One of the big mistakes you can make is to try to dump it on them all at once. A sudden change of direction from an authoritarian-type parent is simply going to be looked on with suspicion, and viewed from all angles to see what benefit can be gained.

Hey, I never said it was simple.

And some of you will have noticed; when you use criteria, you haven’t really lost any control at all. As long as you are the one setting the criteria, and your praise is genuinely judging success, you are still in charge. So don't worry. All we're doing here is trying to be better at what we do. Set some criteria for your own success, and see how well you succeed.

Next posting: Authority and obeying orders