[HN Gopher] Praising children for effort rather than ability (2021)
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Praising children for effort rather than ability (2021)
Author : charles_f
Score : 114 points
Date : 2023-08-13 17:18 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.oxfordlearning.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.oxfordlearning.com)
| csours wrote:
| Related: What is the unit of work for software development?
|
| It's not tasks or lines of code or bugs closed - that's the
| outcome of the work, or the work product.
|
| What is a unit of work? I invite you to come up with your own
| answer before reading mine.
|
| I think the unit of work for software development is learn and
| try. Learn something, try it. Learn something, try it. It's a
| cycle, so its also try something, learn (that it doesn't work),
| try something else, repeat.
|
| I think this is an important thing to coach junior developers on
| - I've seen many junior developers try something, and the code
| still doesn't work, so they revert the thing they tried, without
| knowing or evaluating whether they got closer to the desired
| result.
|
| So it's not try something and see if it worked, it's try
| something and determine the state of the system.
| dfee wrote:
| As you approach this answer from a functional programming
| perspective, I imagine a "unit of work" becomes intuitive:
| something that provides a correct result for its inputs.
|
| Integration of these is also a unit of work.
|
| In my mind, it's also a requirement to be tested, either via
| true unit testing (generally), or if logical, offloading to the
| compiler to statically provide coverage.
|
| This doesn't cover aligning work with the problem statement, or
| design. But that's art.
| [deleted]
| petecooper wrote:
| As a former student of Sir Thomas Rich's grammar school[1], I am
| reminded of their grading scheme combining effort [A-E] &
| attainment tier [1-5]. Often the two marks were linked (A1, B2
| etc), but the coveted low-effort:high-attainment grades did show
| up occasionally. I recall a friend of mine receiving a D1 grade:
| he essentially belligerently phoned it in for the effort quota,
| but somehow got the right answers.
|
| [1] https://strschool.co.uk
| jen20 wrote:
| I very definitely received several A*5 grades in a different
| grammar school - ours used the letter for attainment and the
| number for effort.
| badrabbit wrote:
| I have seen little evidence that there is such thing as natural
| ability, except in rare cases such as actual geniuses, where the
| elasticity of the brain cannot adapt to develop that ability.
|
| An important lesson children should be taught as earlu as
| possible is that effort is useless and wasteful if they fail. I
| agree with perhaps lowering the bar until they develop the skill,
| but fundamentally engraining tolerance for failure into a child
| is one of the worst things you can do to a human psyche. It's
| nearly impossible to remove that mindset later ok. In every
| aspect of their life they won't just fail, they'll use their
| supposed natural inability as an excuse for many other harmful
| ends!
|
| I am not suggesting making them feel like losers when they fail.
| What should happen is you tell them: "You failed and it's all
| your fault, but so long as you learn from your failure and keep
| trying to succeed, you are on the right path."
|
| Talent, effort, opportunities, genius all mean nothing in the
| real world without perseverance. The most talentess and clueless
| fool can succeed beyond anyone else simply by virtue of
| perseverance and discipline.
|
| Praising a child is making them associate a good emotion with the
| thing they are praised for. Don't let that thing be failure. Even
| worse, don't let them believe they are fundamentally flawed and
| handicapped when that isn't true. When they see other kids work
| hard and succeed, the conclusion is effort is enough because they
| are incapable anyways.
|
| I don't even know how the author put together such a horrible
| advice but please! If you insist on bringing a human into this
| world, don't ruin their chances in life over bullshit like this
| where the only purpose is to make insincere parents feel good
| about themselves. Do the right thing which is hard and
| uncomfortable.
| zzzeek wrote:
| I'm nearly desperately hoping you really mean to say, "effort
| is useless and wasteful if they fail *and then quit out of
| frustration*" , or something like that (and that would also be
| horrible advice, just not quite as insane as what you seem to
| be proposing. even quitting something out of frustration is a
| learning experience).
|
| Teaching a child that failure is not an option is tantamount to
| psychological abuse. I shudder to imagine how petrified a child
| would be to take any steps toward anything at all with a deep
| fear of failure embedded.
|
| I suppose everything you've ever done, ride a bike never fell
| (failed), played sports your team never lost (failed), played
| an instrument never had a bad performance? (failed) Basically
| any skill or achievement whatsoever requires a very deep and
| foundational tolerance for repeated, frequent failure in order
| to achieve. Not sure how that isn't obvious...
| badrabbit wrote:
| > I'm nearly desperately hoping you really mean to say,
| "effort is useless and wasteful if they fail _and then quit
| out of frustration_ " , or something like that (and that
| would also be horrible advice, just not quite as insane as
| what you seem to be proposing. even quitting something out of
| frustration is a learning experience).
|
| Sort of. Failire is failure. Period. You don't praise a child
| for failing. You metioned quitting but I didn't. You let them
| know they failed but then help them understand why and help
| them figure out what they can do about it. They are not a
| failure as a person because they failed at a task, failure
| and success does not define them, you should teach them that
| along with the lesson that failure must not be accepted
| without understanding the root cause and even then it is to
| be understood not praised.
|
| > Teaching a child that failure is not an option is
| tantamount to psychological abuse. I shudder to imagine how
| petrified a child would be to take any steps toward anything
| at all with a deep fear of failure embedded
|
| That's not what I said. Option or not, failure should not be
| praised,that's what I said. In fact, praising failure is
| fearing acknowledging what it really is. It's not failing
| that is terrible but acceptance of failure as a positive.
| Failure is essential to learn anything meaningful, but
| praising a child for failing means they won't progress past
| failing, you should teach them that while failure is
| terrible, it can be overcome and show them how to succeed and
| then earn praise. And if that isn't possible, work to
| understand that while they won't get praise for it,
| understanding why they can't succeed by learning from
| insurmountable failure will only make them better.
|
| > whatsoever requires a very deep and foundational tolerance
| for repeated, frequent failure in order to achieve. Not sure
| how that isn't obvious...
|
| That's very obvious, because you don't get a prize or reward
| for failing, that's why you keep failing until you succeed
| and then enjoy a well earned reward. Encouragement to keep
| failing until you succeed and praising for merely having
| effort but not succeeding are very different things.
| zer8k wrote:
| > I am not suggesting making them feel like losers when they
| fail. What should happen is you tell them: "You failed and it's
| all your fault, but so long as you learn from your failure and
| keep trying to succeed, you are on the right path."
|
| Something as simple as undoing the participation trophy culture
| we've created would go a long way. There is a lot of utility in
| developing a healthy attitude toward failure. The problem is
| the pendulum swung way too hard from "win or come back on your
| shield" to "everyone is a winner in their own special way".
| Reinforcing either of these will lead to developmental
| problems. Though, IMO, at least the first one partially
| reinforces perseverance even in the face of failure.
|
| > Praising a child is making them associate a good emotion with
| the thing they are praised for. Don't let that thing be
| failure. Even worse, don't let them believe they are
| fundamentally flawed and handicapped when that isn't true. When
| they see other kids work hard and succeed, the conclusion is
| effort is enough because they are incapable anyways.
|
| I can add some more here: you can try very hard and fail.
| Failing is important because it builds grit. Grit builds the
| necessary framework to succeed even against odds stacked
| against you. If you simply make things easier, or reward
| someone for trying, it releases the happy chemicals that make
| it acceptable to not try harder. Part of the benefit of
| programs like ROTC, some sports, etc is that it can take
| someone who is an amorphous blob of suck and turn them into
| something they can be proud of. There's a lot to be said about
| that. Maybe there's some sort of relationship between the
| reduction in PE programs and the increase in this sort of
| "accepting failure" behavior.
|
| You do not need to shark attack your child when they do poorly.
| However, you also should not praise them for being mediocre.
| Reinforce perseverance, as you suggest. It's your job to give
| your child the necessary framework to persist through struggle.
| Otherwise, as we have seen with many "adults", you end up with
| members of society who are fundamentally incapable of doing
| anything without _constant_ praise. Casualties of the
| helicopter parenting generation.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Something as simple as undoing the participation trophy
| culture we've created would go a long way.
|
| My now-dated recollection is that most kids had no problem
| recognizing "participation" trophies as substandard and
| lacking prestige. Everybody--including the recipient--knew it
| wasn't a _real_ win. They were something you sheepishly
| accepted hoping that you could minimize your time in the
| spotlight and that peers wouldn 't somehow tease you for it.
|
| So, hypothesis: Participation trophies exist because of by
| pressure _from parents_. Either as a way for teachers /kids
| to mollify parents who want to see their child "win", or else
| parents who think they can trick their child into motivation.
|
| With that framing--cynical kids and mistaken adults--the
| "participation trophy culture" has wildly different problems
| and solutions.
| analog31 wrote:
| I think it's a Chesterton's Fence thing -- nobody remembers
| why we give out participation trophies, so we continue
| giving them out. Their importance is overblown. Nobody is
| fooled.
|
| I remember my daughter came home with a ribbon, and I asked
| her what it was for. She said: "Oh, it's just one of those
| ribbons that you get for participating."
|
| We signed her up for kids' soccer. It was a league where
| they didn't keep score. Yet the kids knew exactly what the
| score was after each game, and who the best players were.
|
| I remember as a kid that my motivation came from things
| where I could measure my own performance, such as getting
| through a math problem, or playing pieces on the cello, of
| escalating difficulty.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Mostly agree with what you said, looks like you also got
| downvotes though. The current sentiment is robbing kids of
| being able to accomplish things and be proud of themselves.
|
| Like many things, extremes are easy and the lazy advocate for
| one extreme or the other but what is best is a healthy
| balance.
|
| At the core I think a lot of adults grew up believing success
| or failure is their identity, it's who they are. Instead of
| overcoming that false belief, they twisted reality so that
| failure is as good as success. Their and their child's
| identity is still the outcome if their efforts except they
| dilluted reality and made a negative to be the equal of a
| positive.
| jp57 wrote:
| I've seen this advice before and I have so many issues with it.
|
| First, it just seems like this kind of "parental optimization" is
| likely to have such a small effect on long-term outcomes that
| it's probably a wash overall.
|
| Second, kids don't acquire all their information about themselves
| from their parents and teachers. By the time they reach early
| elementary school, kids, especially smart ones, know whether they
| are trying harder than their peers and whether they're succeeding
| more than their peers. They know what was easy and what was hard
| from their own experience, and they have a theory of mind and if
| an adult tells them something at odds with their experience they
| could just devalue that adult's credibility.
|
| Third, when it comes time to start thinking about what you want
| to do for a career, it really pays to choose the things where you
| can succeed without feeling as if you worked very hard.
|
| Finally "hard work", it self is a vague concept that I think
| often misleads young people into to thinking that effort is not
| merely a means to an end, but the end itself. In fact what we
| really mean by "hard work" is some combination of traits like
| diligence, conscientiousness, and persistence that lead people to
| dot all their 'i's and cross all their 't's, and not quit until
| they've succeeded. In fact, when you become an adult and are out
| working, nobody cares how hard you worked, only that you
| succeeded.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Second, kids don't acquire all their information about
| themselves from their parents and teachers. By the time they
| reach early elementary school, kids, especially smart ones,
| know whether they are trying harder than their peers and
| whether they're succeeding more than their peers. They know
| what was easy and what was hard from their own experience, and
| they have a theory of mind and if an adult tells them something
| at odds with their experience they could just devalue that
| adult's credibility.
|
| We're not saying to praise hard work that wasn't. We're saying
| to give more kudos for good outcomes from effort than good
| outcomes from natural talent.
|
| The reasons to do this:
|
| - Eventually things always get hard enough that you can't carry
| the day on talent alone. If you haven't learned to persevere in
| things that don't come naturally by then, you're going to have
| a bad time.
|
| - If your self-image is tied too much to ability, then every
| new task is a potential to fall down and "lose" what others
| consider special about you without much opportunity for gain; a
| lot of bright people avoid things that could be tests of their
| ability because of this fragile self-image.
|
| There's no simple word trick that can accomplish this alone,
| but framing rewards around effort is one thing (along with
| seeking appropriate challenge, etc) that can help.
|
| And if you've got a kid who's really talented, it's still
| likely to be problematic. My oldest is accelerated 4-6 years in
| math (depending on your baseline) and still breezes through
| everything with very low effort. But the few times that he's
| encountered something that's hard for him, he's folded and
| shown avoidant behavior very quickly compared to peers. He has
| not needed to build the skills, and characteristics of self-
| image, needed to try hard at difficult things and it shows.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| One of worst failures/dropouts I saw at university were the
| guys smart enough to do entire high school without any
| significant effort (ie my roommate left books at school and
| aced it, in stark contrast with me).
|
| Then they eventually reached subject on uni where some
| serious effort was required even from them, and many just
| couldn't get themselves through the suck. Unlike say me who
| was already used to put effort into getting through, and just
| increased it a bit when it mattered.
| jml78 wrote:
| This was me but I eventually realized that just showing up
| to my university classes and paying attention was enough to
| pass.
|
| My issue was that I didn't even want to put the effort into
| attending classes. I failed one class almost every semester
| due to not showing up.
|
| High school I didn't even pay attention in class and still
| passed without any issue.
|
| I never learned how to study. And ultimately knowing how to
| study doesn't really help you in the software world IMO.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Yes, this is why it's important for all students to be
| given the chance to be challenged, so that they can't skate
| through HS, which sets (some of) them up to be caught off-
| guard by university.
| cykotic wrote:
| The post is light on details but they do cite one study. Do you
| have anything other than intuition for your beliefs? I've not
| studied the issue and know nothing about childhood development
| so my intuition is almost certainly riddled with misconceptions
| that have been debunked already. Do you have training in this
| area?
| analog31 wrote:
| The state of the art in this area is that training and
| studies are almost as trustworthy as intuition.
| cykotic wrote:
| I very much doubt this is true. Do you have any training in
| this area? I'm guessing no.
| toast0 wrote:
| > nobody cares how hard you worked, only that you succeeded.
|
| Kind of yes, kind of no. If you paint my house, I kind of
| assume you can do the bulk work, but I care more about the
| transitions. Did you do the hard work of taking the time to
| remove outlet covers and mask outlets? Or did you work quickly
| and paint most of the outlets, make the covers hard to remove
| and leave the wall under the covers unpainted?
|
| Either way, the house is painted, but the quality of the job
| and the likelyhood of referal is quite different.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| There is actually a strong evidence base that found positive
| long term outcomes related to process praise (opposed to person
| praise).
| [deleted]
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > When a child comes home excited with a great mark, say, "you
| deserve it! You worked really hard for that mark.
|
| Ok, putting aside it's important to be emotionally warm towards
| your children and ensure they understand you love them
| "unconditionally"[1], I do think it's also important to help them
| to learn retrospect and to work smarter.
|
| "What a great mark you've earned! What do you think was working
| about your approach?" (then praise and encourage them for
| whatever they say so long as it's remotely reasonable). I just
| say this because I feel like the "work hard" mentality actually
| hasnt served me in life. Once you work for a business no one
| cares how "hard" you work, if it's not smart first. Smart is the
| more powerful variable, you can work Smart and not hard and be
| quite successful. But work hard on stupid things? No one cares
| and you'll be overlooked and even hated on at times.
|
| [1] - I'm not a parent, but honestly everyone has a limit, and
| frankly love should not be truly impossible to lose. My love will
| stop if they butcher my wife, burn down my house, and call me
| fat.
| bmitc wrote:
| I'd be pretty annoyed, as a child or not, if at every turn I'd
| be asked to retrospect about an accomplishment or even a
| failure.
|
| Praising children for hard work rather than "for just being
| smart" is about their own personal wellbeing. Kids who get
| called smart in their early years have trouble facing real and
| difficult problems later in life, because they suddenly feel
| "wait, I'm not really smart" and other such pathological
| feelings. It's about encouraging problem solving, not just
| blindly working hard, and teaching that problem solving is a
| continually evolving process and not some innate thing that you
| either have or don't have.
|
| It's true that the real world doesn't recognize hard work in a
| consistent way, but I think this is more about personal
| development and wellbeing rather than implying hard work will
| make you successful, for some definition of successful.
| Guthur wrote:
| Or more correctly.
|
| Congratulations on the mark. I'm sorry we subjected you to
| such an inhuman peer ranking activity. Society has become so
| psychotic that it's impossible for us to understand anything
| unless we quantify it and this is your initiation.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > I'd be pretty annoyed, as a child or not, if at every turn
| I'd be asked to retrospect about an accomplishment or even a
| failure.
|
| Perhaps like: "I wanted you to _celebrate_ / _commiserate_
| this emotional thing with me but instead you 're _always_
| ruining it by trying to make it some kind of school thing--
| _what the fudge_ , Dad..."
| MaxfordAndSons wrote:
| If _your_ child calling you fat would cause you to revoke your
| love for them, I hope you 're not considering parenthood.
| crummy wrote:
| there's an "and" in that sentence, not an or.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| A problem with this kind of statement is that it doesn't take
| into account that you live with a child pretty much 100% of the
| time. It's not like any other personal relationship, especially
| in the early days. Having a child is _intense_ , and most
| people without kids simply don't have the experience to fully
| appreciate how relentless it is.
|
| I write this simply to say that there is plenty of time to
| praise kids, and plenty of time to coach them. You don't need
| to do both, at once, all the time. Ride the highs, survive the
| lows; the in-between times are there to teach and learn.
| freeopinion wrote:
| I work with and around a lot of really smart people, including
| for my job. I have a very intimate relationship with the very
| smartest of those people. I get to see behind the curtain quite
| a bit. The top 10% have no idea how hard the top 1% work. Many
| think the top 1% are coasting because everything is so easy for
| them. I fall into that trap myself a lot. The truth is that
| most real results take time consuming work.
|
| I once had a conversation with somebody who lost their bid for
| a networking job to some 18-year old kid who "probably just
| plays a lot of video games." They never saw the 1000 hours the
| kid had spent the last two years fighting for better network
| latency. They didn't know the kid could quote two dozen
| different RFCs and could give you the strengths and weaknesses
| of 6 different routing protocols.
|
| Which candidate was "smarter"? I have no idea. I know which one
| had spent more hours preparing for the job. Even if their
| competition thought they were just playing around all hours of
| the day and night.
| eternityforest wrote:
| Doing postmortem reviews of mistakes is also important, if you
| are the type without natural competence. I spent a very long
| time wondering why I was always lost everywhere I go and always
| making the same mistakes, before I realized the problem was I
| was expecting my brain to just suddenly be able to do things
| after lots of practice, rather than using repeatable, failsafe
| systems like "Just assume you'll forget everything and always
| set reminders"
| bruce511 wrote:
| I think what you say yo kids, and what you say to adults should
| be different.
|
| And like either most of "growing up" the transition from one to
| the other is hard.
|
| We want our kids to "work hard" because we know that to get
| places they will need to be able to do that. "Working hard" is
| a skill they need to learn.
|
| But as adults, in the real world, "hard work" counts for
| nothing. The world rewards results, not the hours. Working
| effectively rewards more than working long. It's hard to
| explain to an employee that despite the fact they work "harder"
| than their colleagues, they get paid less because they deliver
| less. "Hard work" counts for very little.
|
| Transitioning from hard work, to effective work, can be
| confusing for a young adult. That doesn't mean teaching
| children that hard work doesn't matter. It's precisely because
| they -can- work hard that it's possible to work smart.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > I think what you say to kids, and what you say to adults
| should be different.
|
| I _strongly_ disagree. Do you have children? Kids are smart
| and surprisingly logical. You don 't need to molly coddle
| them about the value of hard work or even that they have
| different abilities to each other. You can deliver the news
| that they aren't as strong as their sister in a nice way just
| like you can deliver the news that an employee isn't as
| productive as their coworker in a nice way (and obviously
| avoid delivering it at all if possible in both cases).
|
| If you want good parenting advice just watch Bluey. Look at
| how they talk to their children.
| corethree wrote:
| How about I just praise them if I genuinely feel they deserve
| it instead of picking and choosing when to praise in attempt to
| mold them into something I want them to be.
| jewayne wrote:
| You're picking and choosing in either circumstance, and
| attempting to mold them in either circumstance.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| > But work hard on stupid things? No one cares and you'll be
| overlooked and even hated on at times.
|
| You clearly have no experience in multinational corporations,
| this quality is enough, with a bit of luck (ie don't get fired
| by chance in some broad firing rounds, your direct manager is
| not psycho, your whole location is closed etc.) to get quite
| far.
|
| Corps need people who are willing to wade through bureaucracy,
| cumbersome rules and processes, chase people across globe and
| tick checklists. Hard work can get all that done, no real
| brilliance needed. Also there are tons of stupid things that
| are required by various regulations and laws for example.
|
| I mean of course within limits. You are not going to move 10
| levels higher to c-suite just by working hard for 2 decades,
| but having non-trivial career jumps is not unheard of.
| com2kid wrote:
| Figuring out an eloquent solution to get work done faster and
| at higher quality is both smart and hard. It means taking the
| time to stop and think ahead, while also applying brain power
| to the problem.
|
| The idea of avoiding rewarding ability is that we know it leads
| to smart kids who never learn how to put forth large amounts of
| effort, since often times up until college school is so bloody
| easy, they can skate by w/o developing good study habits.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I think you're onto the solution here: praise hard work first
| and foremost but also praise cleverness and resourcefulness
| just as much.
| gopher_space wrote:
| Celebrating a milestone (birthday, graduating, completing a
| goal) and celebrating qualities that helped reach that
| milestone are two different things, in my mind.
|
| "Did a good job" is a perfectly adequate milestone to
| celebrate. Adding qualifiers only introduces the idea of
| limits, imho. There's no point in setting the bar for
| someone with unknown potential.
| [deleted]
| imchillyb wrote:
| The metric for intelligence has been the ability to retain
| information, and show such ability by regurgitating memorized
| data.
|
| The metric became the target, and the regurgitated data
| became the goal, and not the memorization or rationalization
| that was intended. Data over substance, and recognition.
|
| We learn about the wars, and their consequence in order to
| learn from the events. We do not learn about wars so that
| each of us can spit out meaningless numbers such as the date
| of the war, what route was taken, and who was fighting. The
| why is more important than the where. The How is more
| important than the when.
| com2kid wrote:
| > The metric for intelligence has been the ability to
| retain information, and show such ability by regurgitating
| memorized data.
|
| That is the metric for passing tests in the 1980s maybe.
| Maybe some TV stereotype of intelligence is someone who can
| solve a Rubik's Cube fast. Jeopardy also comes to mind.
|
| But if you are talking about actual metrics, the ones used
| to measure intelligence, regurgitating facts is only a
| small part of that (testing different aspects of memory).
|
| > We learn about the wars, and their consequence in order
| to learn from the events. We do not learn about wars so
| that each of us can spit out meaningless numbers such as
| the date of the war, what route was taken, and who was
| fighting.
|
| When I studied history in school it was always with the
| goal of understanding the underlying motivations of the
| actors in play. I don't think I _ever_ had to write down
| the date a battle happened.
|
| I do understand that things got worse in the US after no
| child left behind passed, which is unfortunate.
|
| > The why is more important than the where.
|
| Studying the funding sources of the US Revolutionary War
| was fascinating, to say the least.
|
| (Though I'd say that oftentimes the where and the why are
| closely linked, especially when it comes to natural
| resources!)
| foobarian wrote:
| > I don't think I ever had to write down the date a
| battle happened.
|
| Heh. Reminds me of coming to a (highly regarded) prep-
| high school in Eastern Eu back in the day. All seemed
| awesome at first glance. History teacher was ancient,
| which added to his cachet. Then the first oral exam came.
| We quickly caught on that this guy would ask a topic, and
| stop the student as soon as they deviated from the
| previously spoken lecture. After that it was a race to
| write every word he said verbatim, and regurgitate on
| command exactly word for word. I think the biggest
| contribution this school had for me is I now don't feel
| anxious about the American schools my kids attend which
| many people complain are falling behind other countries,
| catering to the least common denominator, and similar.
| Compared to the rote fest I had I'll take American
| schools any day :-)
| rusk wrote:
| These are separate things. Coach your kids. Praise them when
| they put in the work. Don't sour their successes by telling
| them they could do better. Accept them at their ability.
| Misdicorl wrote:
| Unconditional love is a trope I want to die so badly. It's
| so.... Selfish? I read it as "You don't matter at all. I'm so
| big hearted and perfect; isn't it glorious?" I love my kid and
| wife because of who they are and specific things they do. And I
| tell them that. And I also tell them they can always change and
| my love for them will continue and change with them
| smeej wrote:
| If you think it's possible both to love someone and not think
| they matter at all, I think you're doing love wrong.
| Misdicorl wrote:
| But isn't that what "unconditional" demands of you?
| jader201 wrote:
| I don't think you can both love someone while also
| thinking they "don't matter at all". But maybe your
| definition of love is different.
|
| A parent simply telling their child, unconditionally,
| that they love them isn't enough. You have to believe
| they do matter and are worth something.
|
| If you can say that about your child despite their many
| flaws, and potentially how they might hurt you [1], to me
| is what unconditional love is more about.
|
| [1] That is, humans aren't perfect, and will on occasion
| hurt other humans, to some extent -- especially children
| that are still developing and trying to figure out what
| is and isn't appropriate.
| Misdicorl wrote:
| I don't think you're reading me properly. I think the
| statement is bs, not the feeling. Of course the
| individual matters! That's my entire point about the
| statement being bs.
|
| And to the other half, of course the conditions are
| incredibly nuanced and context dependent and probably
| unknowable to boot. It's not some sort of "three strikes
| and you're out" situation.
| layer8 wrote:
| I guess the one condition is that they ate the individual
| that they are, and not some other individual. So it
| matters that they are that specific individual (e.g. your
| child).
|
| I find the concept problematic as well. In practice there
| can certainly be limits.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > But isn't that what "unconditional" demands of you?
|
| I think we're stuck on this word.
|
| Unconditional means, to many, "without any conditions
| attached" i.e. I will love you even if you don't love me
| back. I will love you regardless of the amount of money,
| status, good looks, $FOO, $BAR or $BAZ you have.
|
| I will love you, no matter the consequences, or the pain
| I will feel for doing so.
|
| IOW, it is love you feel without control; if you have
| control over it, it is conditional.
|
| I have not, until now, come across a definition of
| unconditional love to mean "I'm such a great person, I
| will love you even though you are not", or similar.
| Misdicorl wrote:
| I agree the word is the sticking point. Unconditional to
| me means there is literally nothing that can change it.
| No conditions.
|
| If you found out the relationship was a giant ruse
| created by a bored billionaire and the person began
| behaving completely differently because the contract
| ended: doesnt matter.
|
| All sorts of wacky scenarios you can dream up.
|
| I can't help but feel like saying unconditional love is a
| giant cop out. I love people for reasons. Important
| reasons. Some of those reasons can't change (e.g. you are
| my mom/dad/kid) but those aren't the only reasons. And
| it's important to me to communicate those attributes of
| people I love. And obviously the whole is bigger than the
| parts in some ineffable way. And I (try to) communicate
| that too.
|
| But the whole concept of unconditional love says nothing.
| It is a cop out. And ultimately, a lie
| smeej wrote:
| Love is a choice, not a circumstance, and unconditional
| love is the strongest form of it. I choose to love you
| even if you stop having characteristics I like. I choose
| to love you regardless of any good or bad qualities you
| have. I love you because you _are,_ but I 'll even love
| you after you stop being (what else is grief?).
|
| I don't know if you can understand it until you've
| received it. Until two years ago, I thought "love" itself
| was a lie we tell children to manipulate them into doing
| what we want, like Santa Claus.
|
| But then somebody loved me. Somebody saw me, heard me,
| knew me, understood me. He found joy in my existence,
| often because of his own determination to do so, not
| because I was making it apparent.
|
| He just loves me because I'm me and not him. If only one
| of us matters in this situation, from his perspective,
| it's me, not him. He wills my good for my sake, not his
| own, and even at his own expense.
|
| You seem to be using "love" to mean something like "like
| a whole lot," and maybe that's why unconditionality
| doesn't make sense.
|
| Love is an act of the will, not a response to a
| circumstance.
| jxf wrote:
| I don't think that's what "unconditional love" means or
| should be taken to mean. It usually means that your ability
| to love someone is not contingent on an expectation of
| reciprocity. For example, an infant can't really verbalize
| affection, but you can nevertheless love them.
|
| Unconditional love also doesn't mean "no boundaries". You can
| love someone while insisting, for example, that they respect
| your autonomy or decisions.
| Misdicorl wrote:
| Perhaps that's the intent, but I don't think so. It's root
| is in Christianity (I think?). God loves you no matter what
| and all that.
|
| I think you want a different term: though I'm struggling to
| come up with what it might be at the moment
| bombcar wrote:
| You just defined unconditional love. If what they are and do
| is required - then if they stop doing you'd stop loving.
| waithuh wrote:
| Well, unconditional love does originate from the favorable
| treats you mentioned, but its also the stories you had with
| them, your experiences, your ups and downs. Everything that
| made your life a little more worthwhile by simply standing by
| your side. Past a point, i believe it is impossible to end
| that relationship voluntarily, for both sides.
|
| If it was only because for who they are, I dont think your
| love for them would continue nor evolve, it would be a simple
| materialistic jealousy, never making it past conditions
| (hence, unconditional love).
| seeknotfind wrote:
| There are some good ideas here, but it's a false dichotomy. The
| key takeaway should be, don't tell children they're fundamentally
| bad at something. This is different than not praising ability.
|
| Effort is important, but it can be wasted. Low effort high
| results is more important than raw effort. Effort and ability are
| equally important.
|
| Now, think about ability itself. This is the recognition of an
| individual to be able to perform results. However, it confuses
| the results with the child. Results are what is important, and
| without them there is no ability. It's wasted ability. So instead
| of praising ability directly, I'd suggest praising results.
| Effort + results.
|
| Telling a child they are bad at something is also important. They
| may need to be told this so they can improve, but this is the
| crucial bit. They need to have a path open to improve. People
| change. If you say they cannot enough, and they believe it, they
| truly cannot.
| nineplay wrote:
| I stopped praising hard work some time ago when I really started
| to look at society around me. I don't want my kid to think that
| hard work is the key to happiness. Satisfaction is an admirable
| goal, pride in ones work is an admirable goal, staying up late
| and working all weekend for an A is not an admirable goal.
|
| Call us cynical but we've started teaching our kids a gamer
| attitude towards school. There are 'tricks' you can learn to get
| an A that aren't staying up all night reading every single page
| in your Physics textbook.
| beowulfey wrote:
| At its core, hard work is what provides _self_ -satisfaction, I
| think. If you work hard and appreciate the effort you put in,
| it will feel like a success.
|
| Efficiency or effectiveness of a solution is what elicits
| _external_ satisfaction. Others appreciate you for your efforts
| when it benefits them greatly.
|
| I think both sides are necessary! Some people naturally favor
| one vs. the other, too, and respond better to one of these two
| types of feedback.
| nineplay wrote:
| I'm an engineer. If I'm designing "X", I'm much more
| satisfied if I can find a way to do it in a day modifying "Y"
| than if I spent two weeks building up "X" from scratch.
|
| Hard work also depends on the context and again we're talking
| about school where students have limited choices over what
| they're working on. I hated writing. I still hate writing.
| Spending long hours writing an essay on Camus didn't make me
| feel satisfied, it made me feel drained. Even if I'd gotten
| an A ( I can't remember, I might have if only because no one
| else was dumb enough to take on French extisentialism ) it
| wasn't satisfying because I didn't care if I was a good
| writer or not.
| grumpy_coder wrote:
| You seem to forget that no matter how much effort and success
| we have it's always the bosses son who gets the reward. And
| that sure doesn't feel like success.
|
| Resiliency is becoming more important in our increasingly
| feudal society. Learn to roll with the punches and don't
| expect hard work to be rewarded.
| chongli wrote:
| Teaching growth mindset is probably not an effective intervention
| [1]. Another casualty of the replication crisis.
|
| [1] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-14088-001
| JoshTko wrote:
| Studies like this seem to confirm my hypothesis that humans are
| truly just like LLMs and parenting is alignment.
| lapcat wrote:
| Have we considered not even attempting Skinnerian behavioral
| modification on children?
|
| The feedback already exists in the outcomes of the child's
| actions, for example, their grades in school. Why do we need to
| add additional praise or blame on top of the existing feedback?
| The scores are what they are, and the child can react to them as
| they are, interpret them at face value.
|
| Of course children can be guided and/or pushed to improve their
| performance, but that involves advice and instruction, not praise
| and blame. If you want to help a child to do better at, say,
| math, isn't it better to do some math with them rather than
| doling out praise or blame and then sending them off to their
| room with no other effort from the parent? How about
| _demonstrating_ to them that effort leads to improvement?
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| Praising children for things that aren't true isn't good either
| IMHO. If your kid doesn't work hard, but does a good job anyway,
| don't mislead them by praising them for their hard work.
|
| Too much of parenting advice is about doing subtle things to
| manipulate them to be who you want them to be. Just make yearly
| goals with your kids and help them accomplish those goals.
| gnicholas wrote:
| This is a shallow treatment of a complicated subject. It doesn't
| seem to acknowledge that the concept of growth mindset has been
| challenged, somewhat successfully. [1] It does not seem to have a
| large effect in the aggregate, according to most meta-analyses.
| Also, the largest positive effect seems to be for students who
| are struggling (not surprisingly), which means that perhaps it
| actually has a net negative effect for students who are not
| struggling. And there are benefits to praising students for
| ability when they have unique abilities -- this can lead them to
| feel that they want to cultivate those abilities.
|
| 1: https://www.edweek.org/education/opinion-misinterpreting-
| the...
| lyapunova wrote:
| You are completely right about this being a shallow treatment
| of a complicated subject.
|
| There are many different functions the concept of the "growth
| mindset" serve. Unfortunately, we do not differentiate between
| them, which as you pointed out can make quite challenging to
| even discuss.
|
| For example, the OpEd by Hattie you linked is also a fairly
| undeveloped exploration of what we are really getting at when
| we discuss the growth mindset. On one hand, for example, it is
| a way to help children cope with psychological struggle. On the
| other hand, it is a paradigm by which we live and fit into
| societal hierarchical structures.
|
| I would argue that although having a fixed mindset might be a
| "tool" to use so that you don't "try too hard and hurt
| yourself" (which is more or less what Hattie argues), it is a
| terrible general paradigm to live by as it is fundamentally, a
| self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are born "dumb" and unable to
| read, that will always be the case. Obviously this is not how
| brains work. The reasonable conclusion here is that the growth-
| mindset is the closer model to reality and the fixed-mindset is
| a tool to help handle "moments in time".
| asddubs wrote:
| That's an interesting point, I guess the whole thing is rooted
| in not wanting to communicate to kids that their success is the
| result of innate, immutable talent. But if the kid didn't
| actually work hard, and you praise their hard work, you're
| still kind of communicating that.
| [deleted]
| itronitron wrote:
| Each of my children started hating school once the teachers
| started talking about the importance of having a 'growth
| mindset'. Some teachers prefer to moralize rather than teach,
| and the growth mindset unfortunately gives them the perfect
| outlet for that.
| jay-anderson wrote:
| I feel that teachers learning about how their interactions
| contribute to how young students think and feel about
| themselves and the subject is important. The teachers
| directly talking about 'growth mindset' to students seems to
| work against it. It makes me think of corporate speak. For
| example 'synergy' is worth thinking about (make sure we're
| working together effectively and similar), but the when we
| start talking about finding synergies or improving our
| synergy, eyes start rolling.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Yes, it is also consistent with the "there is no difference
| in innate ability between students" that is popular in
| certain circles (CA Math Framework, looking at you). This
| allows schools to pretend that they don't need to provide
| advanced learning for students who are able to move more
| quickly through material.
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