Month: July 2019

I celebrated my birthday recently. No major plans just the simple tradition in our house which is you choose your favourite dinner and someone makes you a cake and we all sing the familiar ditty in dulcet tones.

So I was set for the same. The cake was my favourite and looked delicious (That’s my actual cake! Chocolate hazelnut) and I was just deciding on dinner right before school pick up.

The next thing is I get another call from our extended family that had returned home from a trip. They wanted to see me for my birthday (lovely right), however they had rung earlier to say they couldn’t make it that morning as arranged. This call was to suggest we go to them with the kids after school. My immediate thought was, I don’t want to go. I just wanted our simple tradition, my cake, my dinner, my husband and kids.

However I didn’t listen to me. I let the memories run: “If I say no they may feel hurt”. “They’ve been away, if we don’t do it today we are busy all week and won’t see them until next week, they won’t like that”. The guilt rose up and I chose to run the program.

Inevitably we went and returned home at dinner time with no prepared dinner and half a cake. It was of course action stations to get baths, lunches and some food in our belly’s ready for school and work the next day. So it was baked beans on toast for my birthday.

I was grumpy and short with everyone trying to get the evening routine into action because I felt resentful that my dinner and birthday evening had been hijacked.

Then I stopped.

I had created this situation. I could have said no to the visit. However I let past memories, past feelings drag me into a negative state. And I chose to stay there. While ever I blamed others for the situation I was powerless. I had chosen that experience. I could have explained that I wanted the time for our simple tradition. That it was important to me. And my relatives could have understood or they could have not. And that is their choice to make. There is always a choice, we may not like it but it is there. We create our own feelings, no one can make us feel anything because it happens in our minds. We decide to feel it, often because of the memories of our past.

Once I took responsibility for my choice I could let it go. I changed my state from one of blame, irritation and anger to responsibility. Then I could just be present with my feelings and move on.

It became my best birthday gift- the gift of growth- changing old stuck emotional energy into wisdom. And I am always grateful for that.

I have worked with children and in the field of education for my whole career. Couple that with being a parent and you can imagine I’ve said my fair share of ‘well done’s’ and ‘that’s fantastic’. It’s a pronounced habit, it’s normal. We praise our kids, we want to encourage them, we want to share our joy and show them we’re proud of them. We also want to encourage the behaviour we like and want to see more of.

The quality of praise

For a long time I’ve taken on board the type of praise that psychologists and educators promote. Often termed encouragement rather than praise as it offers children a lot more value than your old school ‘good girl’. And I get their point, ‘good boy/girl’ implies that they are only good if they are doing ‘x’. It holds them to an unrealistic expectation that they always need to be ‘good’ to get our affection. In other words that our love is conditional. So long as they demonstrate certain behaviour they get our affection. If you really want to drill down it can encourage deceit and internal conflict. They will certainly lie rather than lose their good standing. Or if they are labelled ‘good girl’ and they know some of their behaviour does not fall into that category (which of course it will not) it causes internal discomfort. They want to please and earn your affection however they feel bad about themselves if they fall from grace or have to lie to get it.

On top of that is the consideration; by whose definition? What is good? Grandma’s good is not the same as dad’s etc, etc. It’s a subjective and external reference.

So I’ve always promoted descriptive encouragement, “Gee those colours are so bright” “That has taken you a long time, you kept trying different ways until you got it”. It’s obvious that there is more value in a more descriptive encouraging phrase rather than simple praise.

Where the difference lies

However where the difference lies has just occurred to me. It’s the point of reference that makes all the difference. Descriptive encouragement alerts children to how they may be feeling, for e.g. “I can see how happy you are, doing that”. “The look on your face is priceless that must have felt so good”. However, it wasn’t until recently that I actually understood the value in the differentiation.

Does it really matter?

So some of you may be thinking yeah, I get it, but so what, does it really matter? Who has time to think up these things, can’t I just say “good girl” “that was awesome” or in our less interested moments “MmHmmm” … I’m being positive, I’m interested in my kids, surely that’s enough, what does it matter how I say it?

Well, I have to say that when we understand WHY we are doing something, we are more likely to be invested. When you see value in the potential outcome, you’re more likely to make changes. So here is the WHY?….

In any experience the end result is emotion. We experience something and our body makes a chemical called a feeling, an emotion and we assign meaning. And we remember that feeling as happiness or sadness or anger etc and we link the experience with the emotion as a memory.

And the Penny drops

Simply put, when we praise our kids we are teaching them to look for the feelings of acceptance/ happiness/ self worth/ love… externally. When we describe or alert them to how they might be feeling we encourage them to look within and develop intrinsic motivation and internal validation.

Have you ever noticed that around 4 and 5yrs of age children start to come to you and ask, do you like this? Do you like mine or my sisters better? Whose is best. They want to be on top, they are comparing themselves with their external world. And they won’t let you off the hook with an “I like them both”. What they are essentially asking is you do you love me? Am I valuable, am I worthwhile? We are teaching them to get their self worth from others, and by comparison. They start to feel that they always need to be accepted and validated by an external source.

I think it’s well worth updating our vocabulary and firing up a few new neurons to shift our children’s focus to how wonderful they are. So hit them with a “Do you like it”? and how does that make you feel, then that is perfect”. Because simple praise can lead to external self-worth. We teach them to chase validation and they lose their connection with themselves. When we alert them to how they feel on the inside we strengthen their self-love and self-worth. Now that is worth a bit of extra work and a rethink on our part.

They are enough, let’s alert them to that.

Photo from UPsplash Siora Photography