Study: Praising Effort Motivates Kids Best

How you praise a young child may affect the way he or she faces challenges later, a new study suggests. Praising effort may boost motivation more than praising brains or talents, the authors said. The study included 53 children, ages 1 through 3. Parents were videotaped interacting with them at home for 90 minutes. Researchers analyzed the praise that parents gave. They divided it into “process” praise and “person” praise. Process praise focuses on how the child does something. For example, the parent might say: “You really worked hard on that.” Person praise is directed at a child’s personal qualities. So a parent might say: “You’re really good at that.” Boys on average received more process praise than girls. Researchers came back to the same families 5 years later, when the children were 7 or 8 years old.