Our friend Brian blogged about a fascinating article in New York magazine by Po Bronson about how praising children in the wrong way can actually hurt them instead of encouraging them.
The article explains that emphasizing the effort a child puts forth is more effective in helping them to succeed as it gives them something to control whereas emphasizing their intelligence, a gift with which a child is born, takes control away from a child and may make it more difficult for the child to respond to failure. In essence, a smart child may not put forth extra effort as the child perceives that natural intelligence is what will determine if the child succeeds or fails.
This article by Bronson has struck a chord with me. Randy has often told me that I could achieve whatever I wanted to as I have a wide range of talents and experience. It turns out though that I’ve always been a wonderful underachiever. I understand that there are limitless opportunites, but truly, the possibility of failure or being perceived as something less than exceptional has stopped me from pursuing many courses of action or trying something new.
Randy, on the other hand, has beaten the odds. He was always the youngest in his class (being born in September, he barely made the age cut off) and had a difficult time learning to read and was almost held back in school. As an adult, he still struggles to some degree with reading but that hasn’t stopped him from earning a Master of Divinity degree (a 90-hour degree which is not something one can waltz through).
Randy also has a tin-ear for languages but he didn’t let that stop him from getting a Bachelor of Arts degree instead of a Bachelor of Science. After taking two years of college Spanish, his professor told him, “I’ve never had a student who tried so hard and just didn’t get it.” Randy works at something and even if he doesn’t succeed, he isn’t put off by the failure as he knows that his effort is worthwhile.
I don’t fault my parents or teachers for calling me intelligent or placing me in a “gifted student” program as they were trying to help me reach my potential. Still, I breezed through school until I got to college where my natural intelligence just wasn’t enough for me to succeed. I honestly had no idea how to study, how to work at something especially if I didn’t understand something right away. “If I don’t get it now, and I know I’m smart, then it must just be beyond me,” was my internal response.
This article will be something I’ll need to ponder on for a while as there is a lot to consider. I’m sure it will shape how I speak with our soon-to-be-born daughter as well as my nieces and nephews. Happily, it also opens the door of possibility for me as well as I’m starting to see beyond the box that I’ve built for myself. Perhaps I’ve been afraid to dream of the bigger possibilities as I’ve believed that unless they were a sure-thing, they were beyond my grasp. If the brain is like a muscle in that it gets stronger the more one uses it, it’s time to get off of my “giftedness” and get to work.