Problematic praise vs real recognition - how to motivate your child

We are in a society that has almost exclusively moved away from any physical punishment of children in the name of discipline (yay) with Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands making “smacking” against the law this year (catch up England). Furthermore, lots of parents are now recognising that shouting, shaming and almost all punitive corrections are also, at best, not achieving what we want and at worst, harmful in both the short and long term. Many parents know to try and stay positive and so reward and praise have become the “go to” for getting children to do, and not do, what we want them to.

There is a problem though, and I was once the person who sat there and cried,

“if I don’t have those, what the hell do I have?”.

​Listen up. It is going to be ok.

​In this article I am going to take you through how reward and praise aren’t always the best choice, and then I am going to tell you just how to give your child the recognition they need, making them more likely to do what you want, and more importantly, it could make them want to do what you want them to…
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Neurological science tells us very clearly that external rewards (stickers, money, marbles in a jar, conditional special time, love and praise etc etc)  can be very helpful in changing behaviour in the short term, for some people. But for some people they don’t work at all, and for everyone else, they only work in the short term, and in the long term can cause a desire and need for external motivation that is unhelpful. This means that if you need your child to do something fast, and it matters more than their long-term motivation, and self-esteem, and life goals, rewards can be a helpful parenting tool (for most children - not all). Now I am not being obtuse. Those things are always important but sometimes, keeping your child safe and healthy enough to live that long definitely comes first.
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However, if you are using rewards of any kind, yes including some forms of praise, all the time to try and teach a child the correct behaviour (discipline), they are not the tools that are going to help you, or your child, succeed.

So what are the consequences of using rewards as your main parenting tool?
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The consequences of reward:

• The child will require more and more (and more valuable) reward to continue doing the same behaviour
• The child will likely cease the desired behaviour when the reward goes away
• The child’s desire for the thing being used as a reward increases OR the child’s desire for external reward itself (not the specific item) increases overall
• The child’s ability to self-motivate decreases across the board
• The child becomes easier to manipulate in the future.​

​I know many people argue that as adults we are rewarded for our work with money, and therefore it is completely fine to set this up in our children, but I promise you that this is an entirely different situation and what appears to be happening there, isn’t what it seems (this is another blog for another day).

Back to the point… as I said, one of the “rewards” we use with children is praise, and as well as creating all of those issues above, praise, if done ineffectively, can cause a whole host of it’s own issues. 
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“Praise, like penicillin, must not be administered haphazardly. There are rules and cautions that govern the handling of potent medicines - rules about timing and dosage, cautions about possible allergic reactions. There are similar regulations about the administration of emotional medicine.” (H. Ginott, 1965)

Problematic praise:

1. Using generic phrases

When we use generic praise phrases such as “good boy/girl” or “well done/good job” we encounter a number of new issues:

• The child likely has no idea what behaviour it was that we were praising and so we may see behaviour repeated that we did not intend.
• The child has no concept whatsoever in many cases of what it means in every situation to be “good” - I am not sure I do actually.
• We are modelling some very strange social behaviour around gratitude when we do this. Very often with children we say good boy/job/girl when what we mean is thank you. Next time you go to say this, check if “thank you” works better…

2. Praising results

It is shown in many studies that praising someone for their achievements or results, can lead to much lower motivation to strive as hard next time. Carol Dweck’s famous experiments that led to her work on growth mindset showed that children who were praised for their achievements in tests, did worse in subsequent tests, and a lot worse than peers who had been praised for their effort to achieve their goal. Children who believed they were inherently smart, tried less hard than anyone if they did not receive recognition of their hard work.

3. Praising talents or fixed features including physical attributes

We all want to tell our children they are wonderful, beautiful geniuses right? It is so tempting. For many of the reasons already mentioned, praising an aspect of a child that they feel that they cannot control easily can have some seriously negative consequences. Children who are praised for being naturally talented in a particular area tend to either become cautious with their ability, not wanting to fail or fall from grace, or they become arrogant bordering on narcissistic and fail to put in the required effort to master their talent, then become very upset when they don’t make the cut.

Intelligence is one of these features and an important one. Talking to children in a way that makes intelligence seem like something you either do, or do not have, can be damaging to self-esteem for everyone. 

Similarly, I would advise (and I don’t use the word advise lightly) to avoid all kinds of praise that relates to people’s physical attributes. This is so difficult because the media is constantly commenting on and judging appearance all the time, and that is why it is so important. We cannot change how much we have grown, or what colour our eyes are, and as children, we need not be worrying about our shape and size, or how conventionally “beautiful” we are. Actually I don’t think we need to be so focused on that as adults either. Basically, find something else, something more interesting, to talk to people about.

4. Praising too much

Parents were once told to lavish their children with praise to “build their self-esteem”, when unfortunately science tells us that this does exactly the opposite and is much more likely to be ignored, or create an adult that cannot function without being told they are doing well at all times.

Furthermore, lots of praise is particularly problematic when we are praising someone for something they enjoy or already wanted to do. The science is clear that the more we are praised for doing something we like, the less motivated we will be to do it.

Using praise too often, or being too extreme in our praise, can often lead your child to disbelieve you, or cease to value your opinion, as you clearly do not understand what is and is not worthy of praise. They might also start to believe that you have very low expectations of them, if you are praising them for things that are simple. This can lead children to not only disbelieve you but potentially to disbelieve anyone who says nice things about them in the future.

In addition, extreme praise (“that is perfect”) can set a similarly extreme standard for your child, and as they grow older and more aware, they will start to withdraw from difficult tasks through fear of failing to meet it.

5. Using praise around eating, in any way

Now I mean this. I am about to give you a load of tips of how to use recognition rather than praise and it will be massively effective, I promise. But I am begging you, please, do not use these tips or any other form of praise or reward, bribery, coercion or any other motivator you can think of to persuade anyone to eat more.

I get it. When they don’t eat it is really scary but please read more of our eating articles, get support from one of our consultants, or talk to a medical professional instead because using praise for eating can cause long term difficulties with a person’s relationship with food that can be so so hard to shift and have big consequences to health. We definitely want to avoid your child associating food with love, and that is exactly what this does.

Further to these 5 main issues with praise, sometimes people (and I have been there and done this) use praise in a truly negative way. Examples of this include:

• Praising a child by putting another child or person down
• Comparing siblings to each other
• Mixing praise with a put down “you put your shoes on nicely….  for once”
• Adding demand and expectation to your praise “you did it all by yourself, now you have to do it yourself every time”.​

So let’s get positive. What can you do?

The key here is to step away from what we know as praise and think about recognition. I have been studying human needs in depth for several years now and one of the key human needs I have identified, is the need for recognition.
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What is recognition?

Recognition is understanding in yourself and being shown by others that you have a role in your community, that you are competent in being, and developing as, a human, and are appreciated and respected within your social group. These things are all crucial to our survival as a social species. We need them, and behind all motivation is striving to meet our own human needs.
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Individuality and neurodivergences

The good news about recognition is there are many forms of it and therefore you can tailor it to an individual child. Personalities play an important role here and individual neurology too. Neurodivergent people (those with ADHD, Autism, PDA etc) react very differently from people who have more typical neurology in regard to motivation and that is largely because their needs, though the same as neurotypical people, are more extreme in some areas, and this differs from person to person. Neurodivergences result in a less balanced profile of needs and skills.​

For example, a child with PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance) has a pervasive need for personal freedom and self-determination (autonomy), meaning that trying to externally motivate them will simply cause extreme anxiety. However, their needs are no different from ours and PDA children do still fundamentally need recognition, sometimes in extreme amounts, and by understanding this, you can look at the suggestions below and find the correct way of recognising each individual child, in the way that works for them.

Effective recognition could include:

1. A mutual celebration

In situations where you are clearly celebrating a win with your child, an enthusiastic exclamation like “wow” or “that was awesome” or a gesture such as a fist bump or a grin, can be really effective recognition. Be cautious to ensure your child is happy with whatever just happened though as misplaced excitement when your child is actually disappointed can lead to difficult feelings to manage, for both of you.

2. Unconditional commentary

This approach is something we sometimes describe as the Sports-caster approach. It can feel kind of silly at first but literally saying what you see, without any positive or negative angle, is a fantastic form of recognising what our children are doing. This is a good example of why I no longer say “effective praise” because we are not trying to “praise” here. It is simple recognition, and it does motivate.

“I can see you’ve built a train track with a bridge”
“You are giving all your dollies cake for their tea”
“That is a blue brick”

3. Catching them doing something right

It often goes that when we are busy living and parenting, we only notice and have time for the things we need to correct. This is normal. We are doing a million things with our protection zone on alert for dangers and when our child does something that sets off the alarm, we engage. The problem with doing this all the time is that our relationship can start to feel negative, and we only really “praise” or recognise our children when they ask us too. “Hey come and look at what I have done” and then we have to force the positive reaction.

From now on, every time you remember, try catching them doing something right, something you are proud of. You don’t have to make a big deal about it, just recognise it, with a gesture, a smile, even the act of you noticing might be enough. Or things like “hey I have never seen you do that before” or “you are working so hard”.

4. Focusing on the process

We want our children to want to keep learning, trying and improving themselves and their skills. To encourage and motivate children to do this is actually easy because as humans we have a natural need for novelty. We want to explore and master new things. The problem is we get in our own way when we focus on the outcome. This is how perfectionists are made (that isn’t a good thing) and how self-esteem is broken. Commenting on their problem solving, their determination, their understanding of when to take a rest and try again later, are all really great things to focus on rather than perfection, achievement, results.

If you want to know more about this, you can research the Growth Mindset or google Carol Dweck.

5. Showing interest

One of the ways that humans feel like they are being recognised is when people are genuinely interested in what they are doing, or have done. The best possible way to show your interest is to simply ask your child all about it, whatever it is.

When your toddler comes home with a blue splodge painting, instead of faking an “oh that is amazing” whilst thinking about what you are going to feed them, try “oh you chose a lovely blue colour, tell me all about it” or “what did you use to paint that with?” Or “who did you paint with today?”. They will be over the moon to tell you all about what they did.

You can do this with behaviour too. “Hmm, why did you choose to back off that last tree?” When you see them effectively managing their own risk. This is recognition of their process, and can lead to a great conversation.

6. Being grateful when applicable

Imagine for a minute that your friend popped over for a few drinks, and during the evening you spilled a little of your drink…

You: “Jo can you pass me one of those tissues”
Jo:  listens, and complies quickly with your simple request
You: “Good girl”

It doesn’t sound quite right does it?
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Quite often when we use generic praise phrases we actually mean “thank you”, even if that means thank you for listening to what I just said. If that is what you mean, say it. This is really about appropriately modelling and recognising other people’s contributions. You can also recognise other types of social contributions to encourage positive social behaviours, such as helping.

“You noticed that your sister couldn’t reach her blanket [unconditional commentary], and you got it for her even though it meant you had to stop your game [effort/process]. Thank you so much for helping her [social recognition]”.

7. Recognise the difficult stuff

Regardless of whether a child has done something worthy of positive recognition, praise, reward or accolade, they need you to recognise them as they are in that moment. If they feel like they failed, they feel angry, annoyed, or scared they need you to recognise that difficult feeling and accept it. They need your recognition, support, encouragement and love. Rejecting, dismissing, minimising or wishing away difficult feelings doesn’t ultimately lead to resilience, which is the only thing that brings success.
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Lastly, your general approach matters

Whenever you are recognising your child remember to keep it:

Positive: try to leave any negative commentary on anyone or anything else out of the recognition. Showing your negativity to another outcome, could make them afraid to fail in the future.

Real: Only use recognition when you mean it. Children are lie detectors most of the time and they will spot a fake a mile off. Not believing you can lead to serious future issues for them and for your relationship.

Absolute: try to avoid adding our love and feelings into recognition where this could feel as if our positive regard for the child is conditional on their behaviour. Our love for them is absolute and unconditional. However, talking about feelings when they are directly involved in the behaviour is great. For instance, if a child does something to make you feel better, you might say “it makes me feel happy when you cuddle me when I am sad”. But saying “I love you when you put your shoes on” is not ok.

Individual: try to leave other people’s achievements, efforts and characteristics out of the recognition, and recognise them as a unique human.

Specific: Make sure they know what they are being recognised for doing or saying. “Thank you for being quiet when I was on the phone. That was very considerate”, rather than a generic “good boy”. Even changing “well done” to “well done for picking up your toys” is a good start.

​Empowering: Recognise their progress, their competence, their mastery of a task and their independence in a way that makes them feel powerful enough in themselves to do it again, to keep trying for new goals and to be safe in your support. They won’t get things right every time and that’s ok.

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If you need more support in managing your child’s behaviour, please find a local CalmFamily consultant who offers workshops, courses and individual sessions.

If you love what we do and want to change people’s lives, starting with yours, check out our training. You will get to spend a few days with me in training like nothing you have attended before.

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About the author

Emily Wilding Fackrell

​is a leading specialist in human development and relationships, as well as being a neurodivergent mum of four, a Taekwondo coach and a radical empath.

​Emily is one of the founders and directors of CalmFamily and writes, alongside other specialists, and runs our training courses.