Praise the means, not the end

November 10, 1:50 PMSuburban Philadelphia Teen Issues ExaminerWendy Sheppard

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It's the effort that counts
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Too often parents jump at the chance to praise accomplishments. Sara is struggling in Chem, and she gets an 83 on the end of unit exam. “Great job! I’m so proud of your for getting an 83!” Cool, wonderful, Sara thinks, it’s all about mom. The point should never be that Sara didn’t fail the Chem test and pulled out a B in the process. The point should be that Sara figured out a way to learn the information and apply that knowledge to the exam questions, even though she had significantly struggled in the past. She worked hard and her hard work paid off.

The more we praise our kids for the end result, the more we reinforce that it doesn’t matter how you got to the end result … as long as you get to the end result. This further reinforces that it’s not important to put in the effort to accomplish the end result. Therefore, why bother?

The process of encouraging and praising the process reinforces for our teenagers that we do, indeed, value the time and effort it took to get to the end state. Without that time and effort (and our emphasis reinforces this), the end state wouldn’t exist.

We also reinforce, say in Sara’s case, that it’s not important to us that she did a perfect job. What is most important is she overcame her struggle and did the best she could.

Return to the list for more ways to discourage Narcissistic tendencies in teenagers.