Parents' Role: Build Confidence Through Praise

The Apostle Paul’s strategy to stimulate spiritual growth was to build on past success: “We instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now, we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more.” They were headed in the right direction and he wanted them to go further down that road.

Similarly, you parents should praise what your child does well—even when you know she could have done better. If she lacks aggressiveness on the basketball court, don’t whine about her lack of intensity. Commend her for a rebound she battled for and won. If your son made an error in a baseball game, praise one of his good plays—“You did a great job gauging the wind on that pop fly you caught in the 2^nd inning. Not many fifth-graders could make that play!” Some parents withhold praise because they think it will give their child a “big head”. But most often, the braggart’s self-praise is a desperate attempt to fill his need for approval. If you don’t praise him, he will praise himself.

Commending your child’s successes, though, does not mean that you never point out his failures. Hall-of-Fame football coach, Lou Holtz, believes that American Idol is a reflection of some parents failure to appropriately criticize their children:

The less-than-skilled singers auditioning for American Idol is as staggering as it is sad. Simon Cowell, one of the judges on the show, has gained a reputation as being the “mean old bad guy” because he tells people the truth: some of them simply can’t sing. The fact that they’ve never been told this for fear of hurting their feelings is a troubling commentary on what we value today.

When parents offer “junk praise” it disrupts their child’s ability to judge accurately who God has created him to be. Your child needs help assessing his strengths and weaknesses.

Parents, it may be time to tone down the cheerleading. When your child moans over an awful performance, don’t falsely praise him by slapping him on the back and saying: “Good job!” He knows better and will resent your good-willed lie. It might be better to simply say, “That wasn’t one of your better efforts.” And you might add later: “I think you’re not improving because you seldom practice.” Or if your child has a number of bad performances, he might need to hear: “Tom, you’re a better basketball player than soccer player. Would you like to put more time into developing your basketball skills?”

Finally, it is also important that we don’t over praise

athletic achievement. Educator and coach Bruce Svare praised his dad for emphasizing what was most important: “I am almost certain that my father was more proud of my academic accomplishments than he ever was of anything I did on the basketball court or football field.” Think about it: Do you show (at least) as much interest in your child’s academics as you do in her sports? Even when our sons were in college we tried to maintain a balance during our visits to their schools—we not only attended their athletic contests but also sat in on their classes.