Nothing like telling you to come back tomorrow for Part 2 and then going AWOL for a week! <ahem>  But, here it is…Part 2.  We talked last time about some of the information that calls praise into question, but I said I’m not convinced that I want to fully eliminate praise from my repertoire of positive parenting. It seems to be an instinctive part of parenting!  There’s also research that talks about the benefits of praise, and when I read that, my minds end up swirling.  Don’t praise…praise more…what’s a parent supposed to do?

Here are some of the finer points of praise that I’ve stumbled into and have attempted to implement in my own parenting practices (some with more success than others):

Don’t praise for being || I try hard not to let the bulk of my positive conversations for my kids revolve around things they are. “You’re so pretty!” or “You’re so smart!” don’t really tap into the powerful side of praise. They’re passive and conditional. There may come a day when your child is no longer pretty or smart or fast or energetic. Of course, you know this wouldn’t impact your love for them one bit. But if they’ve built their security of identity and relationship with you around these areas, it places their identity and relationship with you in jeopardy, at least in their minds.

Don’t praise for regular living || My children are not awesome for breathing.  Brushing their teeth, picking up their toys, helping with chores, putting clothes in the laundry…these are all expected tasks (at least by a certain age).  A heavy emphasis on praising for these types of inane behaviors seems insincere to children and can encourage a child to become more motivated by extrinsic factors than intrinsic factors.  I don’t want to wind up creating praise junkies who only do things in search of their next praise hit!  Rather than praise, if I feel compelled to acknowledge one of these behaviors, I try to show appreciation. “I really appreciate how you brushed your teeth without me asking!” or  “Thank you for your help with the dishes tonight!” are subtly but powerfully different from statements like, “You rock for brushing your teeth without me asking!” or “Great job on the dishes tonight!”

We do praise (pretty heavily) for emerging behaviors of regular living. Isla is currently potty training, and every success is a party! But the more she does it, the more the praise will naturally wean back.  It’s not like I’ll be throwing potty parties for her when she leaves for college…

I love to watch you play! || I read this article several years back, and it turned my whole perspective on praise on its ears.  I love the way Rachel Macy Stafford applies this to more general aspects of parenting over here.  There is so much value in suspending all judgment and just talking with our children about how much we delight in seeing them, hearing them, or experiencing them in their lives. Do any of us really want anything more fundamental than that? We want to be seen and we want to be loved.  This is such a simple and powerful way to engage positively with our children.

State what you see and ask questions || Alfie Kohn’s work is another thing that has thrown my former perceptions about parenting and praise into disarray, and these two techniques have been particularly helpful to me, especially when my immediate instinct is to talk, talk, talk in response to my kids. Rather than “judging” their work with my praise, can I simply make an observation about it? “You sure had a lot of math problems to do!” or “Look at that pink elephant you drew!”  Questions are another great way to respond because they create an opportunity to have a meaningful conversation.  “You were really running hard out there. How did you find the energy after such a long day?”

One of my favorite examples he gives comes from this article:

If a child does something caring or generous, you might gently draw his attention to the effect of his action on the other person: “Look at Abigail’s face! She seems pretty happy now that you gave her some of your snack.” This is completely different from praise, where the emphasis is on how you feel about her sharing.

I love how this takes a situation in which I’d normally be inclined to praise and instead acknowledges my child’s generosity while helping him/her develop a savvier level of emotional intelligence. That opportunity for growth would be lost if I simply said, “Good sharing, Isla!”  (Now…if only I could remember to implement this more in the moment…sharing is not going so well with our 3 and 1 year olds lately!)

Praise hard work rather than results || This is an area of research that fascinates me and deserves much more than a short paragraph. But the cliff notes version is that praise, especially praise for identity, can foster laziness. I want my kids to be less attached to outcomes and less worried about failure but be more committed to the process and doing the work. For instance, when a good report card comes home, rather than saying, “Straight As? Wow! I’m so proud of you! What a smarty!” I’d rather say something like, “Wow! You got some really high grades this quarter! You must be working hard at getting your homework in on time! I know that was hard last year–look at how much you’ve grown!”

For more information about this, our counselor has suggested we read the book Mindset by Carol Dweck. I’ve only skimmed a bit of it so I can’t say this is a first-hand recommendation, but our counselor says good things so I’m passing it along to you while I add it to my giant to-read pile.

I’m curious to know…How do you approach praise in your family? Have you tried to implement positive alternatives to traditional praise?

Have you read this? It made the rounds on Facebook earlier this year.  There are other versions of it based on different data sets, too.  Over and over again. Stop praising your children.

The first time I came across this idea, I bristled.  What??? Parents should praise their children? I mean, I know I grew up in the era of self-esteem, but what the heck is the matter with praise?  I want my children to be happy, secure, and proud of who they are. I want them to be absolutely certain I believe in them.  Praise seems like a necessary tool in the arsenal.

So why might praise be a problem? These are the four major reasons that give me pause…

Praise passes judgment. When we say, “Cool drawing!” it means there are uncool drawings, too.  This, of course, is true, and I’m not suggesting children should be made to feel as though everything they do is gold. But praise and love are closely intertwined, especially in the simplistic minds of a child. While you know your love for your child doesn’t change when he colors all over the page and outside the lines, this isn’t necessarily apparent to children, especially younger ones.

Praise is conditional.  Praise acts as a behavioral verbal reward, just like stickers for potty-training or candy for a good report card.  Rewards can have their place, especially when establishing new habits or breaking old patterns, but by definition, rewards are conditional on behavior.  Praise can inadvertently say, “If you make me feel proud/happy/loved/relieved, I’ll do something nice for you. But if you don’t make me feel those ways, I won’t do nice things for you (or, worse, I might retaliate).”

Praise can be insincere. When you say that drawing is the best drawing you’ve ever seen or your child is the smartest? They know it’s not true. They know there are better drawings and smarter people and faster runners and lovelier singers.  Which means one of two things for your child–either you have terrible judgment or you’re lying, neither of which makes you particularly trustworthy in their eyes.

Praise is a cheap substitute for seeing. A more foundational need for our children is to be seen, to be acknowledged for who they really are. When we praise, praise, praise, the takeaway message starts to sound more like, “When you perform the way I want you to, I will approve of you and accept you,” and this isn’t the foundational message I want my children to take away from my parenting.  I want them to know that I see all parts of them and I’m a safe place for them to be themselves. I want them to know they can come to me with their problems and weaknesses.  I want them to hear, “I see you just as you are and love you,” rather than the similar but profoundly different, “I see you doing what I like and love you for it.”

That said, I’m not sure I’m ready to embrace entirely praise-free parenting.  Tomorrow we’ll talk about ways to foster positive interactions without going heavy on the praise. Until then, what do you think about praise? Is it a positive force in parenting or does it do more harm than good.

Who are your favorite people to be around?

I have a small handful of fellow moms who I especially love to be around. I’m not even necessarily close to all of them, but anytime we’ll be together, I eagerly anticipate those events.  They’re different, these 5 women–different stages of life, different numbers of children, different careers, wildly different personalities.  But I didn’t have to think twice when I wondered what they all had in common…

They’re happy.

I know they’ve had struggles. Things haven’t gone perfectly with their children or their husbands. They don’t have it all together and they’ve experienced loss and grief deeply. But as I watch them, I’m always struck at how they approach their life, even its struggles, with a positive, hopeful outlook. I feel light when I’m around them and I come away feeling restored and energized.  Their happiness is infectious.

Are you happy around your children? I know I’m often not. Exhausted, grumpy, and anxious might be fairer ways to identify my moods.  When I have to spend time with exhausted, grumpy, or anxious people, I know I don’t enjoy it.  Why on earth would I think my kids would feel otherwise about being around me when I’m in those moods?

I don’t expect to be my children’s favorite person to hang out with, and I do want my home to be a safe place for everyone (me included) to let our hair down and experience all the emotions, even if they’re negative. But if I’m not careful, my negative moods can beget more negativity in me, negativity which can put off everyone around me, my children included.

On our way home from dinner last night, we stopped at Michael’s so I could pick up supplies for a Christmas project. On my way out of the store, I could see Jude eyeing me, and I indulged my silly streak and ran toward the car, waving my arms wildly. I’m sure anyone else in the parking lot thought I was crazy, but he thought I was silly and happy and he smiled.

That was a win in my book.

Here’s to capitalizing on happy this week and choosing the bright outlook even when things seem hard.

http://www.lovingmotherhoodmore.com/posts/743/

“How’d your day go?” I asked as he climbed into the car over the mountain of chaos and toys strewn through our backseat.  There was no time for eye contact, the steady gaze of the pick-up line attendant nearly glaring at me with each passing second it took me to pull out of the lot.

A grunt and a groan was all I got for a response to my question, the depth of my curiosity met by equal parts apathy and irritation on his part.  I’m never quite sure how to play the after-school-question time.  I want to know everything.  He wants to tell nothing. So it’s a dance, one in which I have my own agenda but I try to let him lead.

Truly, we’re horrible at the dance!

What I want more than anything is to know my kids, and for them to know me as a soft place to land.  But when I force it (and, oh! How I’ve tried!), it backfires on everyone, and we wind up being more disconnected than when I started.

I’ve experimented with various approaches–asking specific questions, asking unexpected questions, asking no questions and waiting for him to take the lead. Eventually, I came to realize that the time immediately after school is not the best time to get information from Gabe. I’m curious and excited and eager, but he’s tired and agitated and needs a chance to let his hair down.  So I’ve resorted to asking the very basic, “How was your day,” mostly as a greeting, with no expectations, and I try to give him a little space.

I’ve had to let go of how I thought it should work and find a way to make it work for real.  The answer lay a little bit in having the right time and the right routine.  The right time for us? Dinner.  We typically eat dinner around the table as a family and have several conversation starters through which we rotate.  Usually, it’s sharing highs and lows, but we also have several boxes of premade discussion questions.

Our car ride to school and bedtime are other times for built-in connection, albeit not as consistently. On our ride to school, we can sometimes be found sharing gratitudes or things we appreciate about each other (we do this especially when we’ve had a bad morning), and bedtime, with Gabe and Isla’s penchant to stall, is a wonderful time for open-ended talking.

Our connection times are pretty common–before school, before bed, and at meals. Yours could be entirely different. Maybe your kids are talkative after school, or perhaps you snuggle in bed in the morning before the day fully starts. Maybe you have a weekly family meeting or you and your child like to grocery shop together.  Then, think about the kinds of conversations you want to have and what type of questions and routines you could incorporate to build the habit.

I was going to create a printable with collection of conversation starters, but the more I looked around online, the more I realized they’re already out there! Why reinvent the wheel, right? So here are three of my favorite collections–creative conversations starters to help foster connection with your kiddos.

If you try out any, let me know how you enjoy them!

Family Diner Project Conversation Starters

Momastery’s Key Jar

Simple Simon’s 25 Ways to Ask Your Kids, “So How Was School Today?”

I’m pretty sure my head is set on a swivel, at least as far as my firstborn is concerned.  Four steps this way, four steps back again, all the while gesticulating wildly while proclaiming the minutiae of his latest creation in Minecraft or invention of a recess game.  Not being even fractionally as invested in any of said details, I sit in front of him until I suddenly realize I have no idea what he’s saying because I’ve fallen into meal-planning or thinking about tomorrow or worrying about something in the future…or even just daydreaming about the latest book I’m reading (Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett, an excellent read, in case you’re interested).

Being an engaged mother  is the ultimate moment-by-moment practice.  It’s saying to my children, “I’m with you, right here and right now. All of me. You’re worth it.”  There’s nothing I want more as a mother than to build that sense of worthiness–and the security and confidence that comes from it–into them.

Of course, when I don’t engage well, it’s not because they’re not worth it. It’s because my “living in the moment” skills flounder.  Oh, I’m super experienced at planning for/fretting over/worrying about the future. I also excel in obsessing over past events.  In fact, I use these two skills so much, there’s hardly time to practice the whole “living in the present” thing. 😉

The good news is the ability to live in the present is a skill that can be developed. I know this not because I’ve had great success in this regard, but because when we were deep in the throes of infertility, my counselor told me so.  Basically, you can skip that session of counseling, and I just saved you $150.  You’re welcome!

I’ve been toying with this concept off-and-on ever since, and have realized I can’t be the mother, wife or woman I want to be unless I grow my ability to be fully present in the moment.  Here are four approaches I’ve been using:

Cultivate Mindfulness || conscious breathing, meditation, purposeful movement…Mindfulness practices can encompass a variety of activities, but this study presents a bottom-line definition:

Although scientists have yet to agree on a precise definition, the most commonly cited one belongs to pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn, who defined it as “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally.”

Research demonstrates that mindfulness practices improve attention, decrease rumination, and enhance our emotional intelligence. Mindfulness is associated with lower rates of depression, decreased stress arousal, and improved high blood pressure. It even appears mindfulness slows down a portion of the biological aging process, telomere shortening, which sounds like a horridly boring scientific concept, but was introduced beautifully in this episode of On Being about stem cells where Krista Tippett interviews Dr. Doris Taylor.

Mindfulness is the silver bullet if you want to improve your ability to stay present in the moment.

Practice Gratitude ||  popular culture is full of references to the power of gratitude, but scientific studies support many of those notable claims.  Being thankful for what I have brings me back to the current moment because it makes me take stock of the present; while I’m observing the good things from the present, it’s much harder for me to stew over the past or fret about the future.

Engage Your Senses ||  the enticement of a fresh-baked loaf of bread, the chill of a cold lake dancing around your hot summer ankles, magic of a rainbow stretched wide and bright across a storm-laden sky. Nothing can snap me into the present like a compelling sensory experience.  This summer, I read about walking meditations, and I experimented with them myself and with the kids while we walked.  Isla likes color ones. While we walk, we go through the colors of the rainbow, finding something around us for each color–a red stop sign, an orange flower, a yellow line painted on the street.  More challenging for me was the sensory one, where I assign myself a number and work my way through the senses, finding that many things in each sense category– say, three sights I can see/hear/smell/touch/taste.

Create Something || It was a trick I learned during the throes of infertility, the gist being that childbearing is one of a woman’s ultimate forms of creativity, and when that creativity is squelched, tremendous heartache ensues.  While many women try to manage the pain by forcing the outcome with various fertility treatments, tapping into that creative energy in other avenues can channel some of the struggle more positively.

I can’t remember where I read it, but the thought resonated with me, so I dreamed up some small creative projects, took a trip to Hobby Lobby for supplies, and started creating.  I think my first project was a wreath?  And that wreath, oh! How it helped!

I don’t believe creative projects healed my infertility, but I do know that engaging in creative projects freed up some emotional space in me that was otherwise congested by longing and hopelessness.  Along the way, I found that I entered a rejuvenating state of flow while I was doing them, fully present with the tiny details, an immersive sensory experience.

You don’t have to make wreaths; perhaps creativity to you is an artfully prepared meal full of compelling and thoughtful flavor combinations.  Maybe you delight in a carefully worded short story or handwritten note.  Perhaps your art is the way you organize and work with numbers.  Whatever it is, tapping into that creativity can open up space in your mind for the charms of the present.

How about you?  If you try one of these, let me know how it goes! Do you feel like it improved your ability to stay present in the moment?

Do your kids like photos? Mine love photos–of themselves, of course! Lately I’ve been snuggling in bed at night with Isla while she goes to sleep, and her favorite way to pass the time…”Mommy, show me pictures of Isla!”  So I dig up my Instagram feed and scroll back through pictures I’ve come to love and ones I’ve forgotten were there.

Her current favorite? A two-year-old picture of an abdominal x-ray she had done after she swallowed two travel-size chess pieces that had magnets in their bases.  Most expensive toy we’ve ever owned, that chess set! An ER visit, a doctor’s visit, and two x-rays later and she’s fine, but I am decidedly poorer!

We look at the belly, the hips, the ribs, the legs, the spine…Every time I point out the same things, tell the same story.  And every day, she asks again.

Jude is the same, except with pictures of his cousin.  Mem-mem, Mem-mem, MEM-MEM!!! (i.e. his name is Bentley, in case you don’t speak toddler).  We look for pictures of Cousin everywhere! My texts, my Instagram, Uncle’s Youtube, all our family’s Facebooks…All my kids love Bentley, but Jude looooovvveeesss Bentley, making my auntie heart very happy!

Have you read this article? I’ll give you the super cliff-notes version, but the entire thing is worth a read.  The barebones summary is this:

The single best predictor of a child’s emotional health and happiness is how much they know about their families.

The single best!

In the article, Dr. Sara Dukes reports, “The ones who know a lot about their families tend to do better when they face challenges.”

Dig out the family photos. Unearth old home movies.  Polish off the family stories.  Maybe take a trip to show your children where you came from, or even their grandparents.  Passing down your family’s stories is more than just a fun way to spend an hour or an evening–it’s a pivotal connection point in which you make an investment in your children’s long-term happiness and well-being.

I thought I had gotten away with it.

Or, rather without it.  Playing, that is.  When Gabe was little, over and over again he’d ask about playing.  And I did play with him…some.  But playing with him was hard for me.  First, he’s a boy, and I’m a girl who grew up with no brothers.  Cars? Fighting? Chase? I do not understand any of these things!

Second, give me an objective and I can play all day.  Well, maybe not all day, but I can do it.  Board games–even the dreaded Candyland! I like having objectives.  Gabe, however, did not.  You’d have to have played with him to fully understand, but he either has no objective, or (more likely) has a very complicated, off-label objective that has more rules than I could ever possibly remember.  I used to joke that he’d spend longer telling me the rules than actually playing a game!  Playing according to someone’s complicated and seemingly arbitrary rules is confusing, to say the least.

Third, I was depressed and anxious.  We were in the throes of infertility and miscarriage, and when we played, I had to be present–uncomfortably present, because slowing down to play child’s games took a pace just right to experience the ache of desire and the futility of hope.

I tried to rally with reading.  I really could have read all day to him, and we did read tons.  But playing? Playing was not my forté.

For as much as I wanted more children, I wasn’t super excited about repeating the “play with me” stage.  But for three and a half years, Isla never asked! I’d read to her, cook with her, color and paint with her…but she never asked me to play.  I started thinking I’d gotten away without it.  Until recently.

Now?  Now, it’s all she asks for!  Before we leave for school, when we get home, all morning long, when I’m cooking, when I’m cleaning, when she’s supposed to be napping, after dinner, and when I put her to bed at night.  “Mom, want to play?”

I knew I wanted to do a better job this time around.  Luckily, I have a little more in common with her games since they’re ones I played when I was little (e.g. they involve fictional characters conversing with one another…no hitting/shooting/exploding/etc.), and thankfully my emotional health is stronger than it was several years ago.  I still don’t love open-ended play, but it’s not a form of torture anymore.

Unfortunately for her, life with 3 children is much busier than it was when it was just Gabe, so there’s not always time to play. Even though I want to do better, she still asks a lot and I still find myself saying no frequently–often legitimate no’s, but no’s nonetheless.

What’s you’re child’s “thing?” How do they seek you out? Isla likes to play, and she loves me to play with her.  Gabe’s isn’t so much playing anymore, but he loves to tell me about his books and video games.  Jude doesn’t really have “things” yet.  Unless you count chocolate chips as his “thing.”  He loves to eat chocolate chips…

What if, this week, I made a point to seek out our children first and engage them in their things? What if, instead of waiting for her to ask, I said, “Hey, Isla? Want to play?”  What if I asked Gabe to tell me about the next structure he’s hoping to build on Minecraft?  What if we thought of the thing we often find ourselves saying “no” to and say yes before they even ask?

I’m going to do that this week, hopefully at least a few times for each of them.  I want them to know that I see them, not just in a physical sense, but that I see their passions and the things that make them excited and I want to meet them there and share those with them.

Care to join?