The one thing you are doing that could lower your child’s IQ
The one thing you are doing that could lower your child’s IQ
By Jenny Trimble, RN BSN
Raising kids is hard isn’t it?
I often wish my children came with a handbook specific to their personalities at birth. We want the best for them. Best schools, be talented in sports, polite, smart, I could go on and on. It’s easy for life to just carry us on by and sometimes we miss little important nuggets.
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Did you know that the way we praise our children can actually have an affect on their IQ?!
I read an article that led me to the book “Mindset” by Carol Dweck. She has done some pretty interesting research. One part that particularly stuck out to me was how “PRAISE” affects us
In one of Dweck’s studies they gave some children moderately hard problems from a non verbal IQ test to solve. When the kids were done, they received one of three statements:
1. “You must be smart” (praised for their intelligence)
2.“You must have worked hard at these problems (“praised for their effort”)
3.The control group was given no additional feedback.
They then provided a second IQ test with more challenging questions that the kids did not do score well. A third IQ test with much easier questions was administered and they discovered that after the negative experience, the students praised for abilities’ performance plummeted. Dweck states they lost faith in their ability and did even worse than when they started. Praising these children for their ability placed them in a fixed mindset.
In contrast, the children praised for their effort enjoyed the harder problems the most and their scores got better and better.
The researchers also discovered that the kids that were praised for their ability (or intelligence) Were:
more likely to give up after they did poorly on something
more likely to lie about how well they did
more likely to view their failure as evidence of low intelligence AKA Failure = Dumb / Stupid
When we say things like “you are so smart” we are inadvertently teaching them that their performance is a directly correlated with how smart they are.
So what do we do? Do we stop praising our kids?
Carol Dweck and others encourage us to emphasize praise that makes kids feel RESILIENT. What an awesome word right? Resilient means “able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.”
We want to raise children that are smart, able to handle challenges well, kind and loving and so much more. I believe that if we work on being more mindful and praise are children often on their strategies, we can end up with a good balance and set them up to be more confident and resilient.
So you might be wondering what praising resilience actually looks like.
Here are some examples to get your started:
You are creative at finding ways to solve problems
Your hard work really shows
You were brave when you…
You remembered to bring your bag, what a great memory
Want a printable of some sample praises?
Download Printable
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References:
Dweck, Carol Ph. D. “Mindset, The New Psychology of Success”Audiobooks 2009
Cimpian A, Arce H-M C, Markham EM and Dweck CS. 2007. Sublte Linguistic cues affect children’s motivation. Psychological Science 18 (4) 314-316.
Gunderson EA, Gripshover SJ, Romero C, Dweck CS, Goldin-Meadow S, and Levine SC. 2013. Parent praise to 1-3 year-olds predicts children’s motivation frameworks 5 years later. Child Development.
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