A Note on Individual Worth

You are not valuable because you can do things that others can’t do, but because you do do things that others don’t do.   Today I was in a parenting class where they talked about a study in which certain children were praised for their intelligence and others were praised for their effort.  The children who were praised for intelligence were less likely to take risks and try things that might be difficult because they were afraid of failure, whereas the students who were praised for effort were more likely to be persistent, and to try challenging tasks.  In this class we have talked a lot about giving children a sense of power.  Resilient children are ones that feel they have power over themselves and their lives.  We can give them this sense of power by giving them choices and responsibility, and allowing them to be autonomous and make mistakes.  Today’s particular class was about how to healthily praise your child, and it occurred to me that this idea of power also applies to praise.  Praising things that your child has control over such as effort, increases your child's sense of power because you are praising something that they can work on and change, whereas praising something that we tend to think of as inherent such as intelligence makes them feel as though their worth is dependent on an uncontrollable factor, and that if they were to lose this thing, or if it were proven to be untrue, or if, heaven forbid, someone else were more intelligent, or musically gifted, or athletic, then their foundation of self worth is compromised. We need to help people understand that their worth is not based on their talents or skills, but rather, what they do with those talents and skills.