[dhimes]

This is an important distinction. The studies say that, in general, you want to say to a child, "great job for being a hard worker" rather than "wow, you are so smart."

It turns out that if the kid associates his/her self-image with being smart, they tend to avoid hard stuff later that they may not look so smart it. If you praise effort, their more likely to work hard a hard problems.

[briguy]

My personal take on this is that it helps to show/teach kids what the expected results are and then praise them for their hard work in trying to reach that goal. For instance, I think it is healthy to go outside and play basketball and say "The goal is to get the ball in the basket". If you miss the basket, try to figure out why you missed and adjust. I think that if your kid gets progressively closer to the hoop and they are trying different things to adjust, that they should be praised for their hard work/effort (even if then do not get any baskets). The kids will focus on both the goal and the process of trying to adjust to achieve that goal, both of those having rewarding outcomes. However if you only focus on the Result, certain kids that are not analytical or highly gifted athletically, could get discouraged when they are not attaining those results as quickly as others. Better results are attainable for others, however they need more nurturing and more practice. On the other hand, to go out and show a child exactly how to shoot the ball in great detail, does not allow the child the room for experimentation to learn how to adapt. It is important to realize that there are some very successful guys in the NBA that can't really shoot that well (they can sure dunk or pass)....and some team owners that can not shoot at all. Each kid will be different. Find out what your kid is good at and help then along with that.

[dhimes]

This makes good sense. As I recall, the new results focused on what you said after a successful result. Praising the kid for being smart tended to make them shy away from intellectual challenge, because they didn't want to be seen as not smart enough. Praising them for working hard for their result, on the other hand, resulted in kids not afraid to try hard things.