Don't tell them they are smart!

I've been reading the book "Nurture Shock. New thinking about children" by PO Bronson and Ashley Merryman. It is a very, very interesting book taking subjects such as "The inverse power of praise," (new research suggests if you tell him he is smart all the time you will ruin him) "The lost hour," (children get an hour less of sleep a night that affects IQ points, emotional well-being, ADHD, and obesity) "Why white parents don't talk about race" (does teaching children about race and skin color make them better off or worse?), "Why Kids lie", "The search for intelligent life in kindergarten", "The sibling effect" (why siblings fight), "The science of teen rebellion", "Can self-control be taught?", "Plays well with others." The authors take these issues that we will all deal with if we have children or work with them in the schools and look at what research in the past has said, did it prove true, and discover new research that is totally contradicting what we have all been led to believe and taken as fact. I'm only on the second chapter and I'm sure I'll have much to blog about in the future but today I'd like to comment on the first chapter.

"The inverse power of praise" chapter is all about how we are told to tell our children they are smart from a very young age. Little Tommy is 1 year old and says cat and his parents immediately start telling him and others in front of him how "smart" he is. It just continues from there. The research they uncovered showed that children who were constantly told they were smart (and these kids typically are smart kids) have something happen to them when they find themselves struggling in school. They give up. They get frustrated that the skill didn't come easy to them because they are smart, right, and everything has always come easy to them and so they refuse to push through and try harder until they master the skill. They don't want to look like they are not getting it in front of their peers and so they act like they just don't care anymore or they become very agitated. That is where you find a lot of Jr. High students who have always had studies come easy to them now start dropping grades because they aren't just getting it right away.

The new research studies done showed that instead of telling your children they are smart you need to be more specific and tell them things like "you are a hard worker" or "you are very creative" or "you worked really hard trying to figure that out." Throughout different studies done on groups of children where group A was praised for their effort and group B praised for their intelligence, the "smart" kids would cop-out of harder puzzles and choose the easier ones where the the other group chose the harder puzzles and 'got very involved, willing to try every solution to solve the puzzle.' The "praised for their smarts" group assumed their failure in the harder tests was evidence that they weren't really smart at all. "Just watching them, you could see the strain. They were sweating and miserable."

Tests scores even improved with the groups that were praised for their effort but those for their smarts actually did worse. "Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control. They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child's control and it provides no good recipe for responding to failure," states Dr. Carol Dweck who led the studies out of Stanford.

The chapter ends with the fact that as parents we want to be our children's cheerleaders and boost them up any way we can. Telling our children how smart they are just comes naturally and to tell a parent they shouldn't do it will be very hard for many to accept. I for one recognized this first hand in my oldest son last year and then tonight, three days before school begins, it has surfaced again.

I don't know how many times I have told Eli he is smart. It just comes out like saying "I love you" during the day. But while he was in 2nd grade for the first time in his school career he was challenged to the point where he wasn't getting it. To say he was devastated would be an understatement. It was just one area, "ways to success" (a saying that now brings stomach tightness to me when I hear it uttered from his lips) where he was tested on his math skills by the computer. He had to keep moving up in the levels and when he got too many wrong he would have to start all over again. Of course he had to finish certain levels before he could move on to other things, sometimes even actual things in class like P.E. The attention it was bringing to this shy child was becoming unbearable in his mind. He had never failed at anything in school and for the first time was having to ask for help, something he did not want to do - again bringing attention to himself.

Now I don't know if this proves anything based on what I read in the book but it does support the fact that a bright child who for the first time struggles ended up having such an emotional and physical breakdown in school that year. We did end up talking to his teacher about ways to handle this for Eli but I'm sorry to say the fear of taking those tests didn't improve.

And then at 9:30 tonight he comes into the kitchen crying from his bedroom telling us "I just realized that I would have to start ways to success again when I go back to school next week." Tears, convulsions, fear followed. But I remembered the book. I told Eli that he was a very hard worker and that it was okay if he didn't understand something in school. I talked about his brain learning new things that were hard at first and that made him try more, which was good for his brain - made it grow! I explained that everyone has areas in school that don't come easy to them at first but you have to just try harder and he was very good at that. Once I got over the fact that I didn't want to tell him how smart he was (because gee mom, if I'm so smart why is this so hard? I thought to myself) then the other words came flowing out.

He actually listened to me and his dad and calmed down. We talked about telling his teacher up front that he was nervous about these tests in math and that he would like her extra help. And then he was okay.

I just found all this very interesting and thought I'd share it with my blog readers tonight. Anyone who has thoughts about this research or their own experiences from working in education or with their own school aged children please share.