The Price of Privilege by Madeline Levine PhD

Author:Madeline Levine PhD [Levine PhD, Madeline]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

Understanding Why Praise Is Often “Bad” Warmth

The self-esteem movement, which had an extensive and undeserved run in this country, blurred the boundaries between encouragement, praise, and warmth. In spite of refrigerator doors covered in badges and ribbons, and gold stars awarded for even the slightest effort, kids today are not only not better adjusted than they were thirty or forty years ago, they are in fact more emotionally troubled and less academically successful by most measures.9 Meta-analysis—the merging of hundreds of studies to enable researchers to make overarching conclusions—shows that “raising self-esteem will not by itself make young people perform better in school, obey the law, stay out of trouble, get along better with their fellows; respect the right of others, or produce many other desirable outcomes.”10 In actuality, self-esteem has a very limited relationship to either accomplishment or deviance.

Serious researchers in the field of self-esteem have suggested that while our overly broad focus on self-esteem has not been productive, there is value in boosting our children’s self-esteem when they work hard and show good moral character.11 However, praise for ethical behavior, sincere effort, and worthy achievements needs to be balanced with expressions of disappointment and correction for hurtful behavior and lazy effort. Children need a realistic sense of self, not an inflated sense of self. Indiscriminate praise makes it hard for children to evaluate themselves realistically.

We all tend to praise our children reflexively, and it’s hard to imagine that this can have negative effects on their development. If warmth is such a desirable quality in a parent, how can praise, which seems to convey interest, appreciation, and warmth, be a bad idea? While perhaps it’s reasonable to question excessive praise, the idea of questioning everyday praise—“Good job,” “I’m so proud of you”—seems unreasonable. For many parents, warmth and praise seem inseparable. But they are not the same thing, and appreciating this fact is important to understanding how some children come to be appreciative and others come to be entitled.

The disturbing sense of entitlement so often observed in affluent kids is partly an outgrowth of parents’ efforts to elevate their child’s sense of self with persistent praise. The difference between high self-esteem and narcissism can be hard to distinguish in privileged kids who have been repeatedly told that they are special. As one of my patients said, “If I’m so special, then why do I have to set the table or take out the garbage?” She was slyly taking to its logical conclusion her parents’ single-minded focus on individualism and self-esteem—and, likewise, their failure to stress kindness and reciprocity. Self-absorption may have few personal costs. However, its costs often accrue to others: an exhausted mom cleans up the dinner dishes for her son; an overworked dad takes out the trash for his daughter.

Praise is a transaction between two people and as a result has an impact on both the giver and the receiver. This should be obvious when we notice the reaction of our child after telling her for the tenth or hundredth or thousandth time how “smart” or how “good” she is.

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