Month: May 2011

“Contrary to popular belief, praising children’s intelligence did not give them confidence and did not make them learn better.”

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The advice comes Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of motivation at Stanford University from an article How Not to Talk to Your Kids written by Po Bronson and appeared in New York Magazine. 

“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 a failure.”

The quote below are from Carol Dweck in an article that appeared on Good Morning America titled Why Praise Can Be Bad for Kids …

“Dweck found that children’s performance worsens if they always hear how smart they are. Kids who get too much praise are less likely to take risks, are highly sensitive to failure and are more likely to give up when faced with a challenge.”

“Choose your battles wisely”

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From an article at SixWise.com called How to Most Effectively Pick Your Battles …

We’re all given a finite amount of time in a day, and it’s up to each of us to determine how to spend it. In relationships (with kids, with a spouse, and so on), we’re faced with many conflicts everyday, and you may be tempted to fight through each of these conflicts, to ensure you get your way, to prove that you’re “right,” or maybe just because you feel challenged. But most experts agree: choosing your battles wisely is a much better way of life than battling out every disagreement.

Although they may seem important at the time, most battles are NOT worth fighting.

According to Dr. Richard Carlson, author of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff … and It’s All Small Stuff, “Often we allow ourselves to get all worked up about things that, upon closer examination, aren’t really that big a deal. We focus on little problems and concerns and blow them way out of proportion.”

It’s up to us to choose to either make a big deal or simply let it go, and, according to Dr. Carlson, if you learn to choose your battles wisely, you’ll be far more effective in winning those battles that truly are important to you.