What Is Intrinsic Motivation? How To Praise Your Kids While Teaching Grit

My New Life

Kate Garlinge

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4.7 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2021

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We parents are a proud bunch. It’s natural to shower our children with compliments when they achieve something. But when babies become toddlers, “Good job” often evolves to “You’re so smart” or “What an amazing artist you are”. Too much of this kind of feedback as our child get older, may not help them persist in the face of challenges.

Psychotherapist Susan Bordon of Kinspace joins host Jessica Rolph on today’s episode to discuss ways to encourage intrinsic motivation. With a little bit of grit, kids are more motivated to try new things even when it’s hard, and make efforts to pitch in without bribes or rewards.

Key Takeaways:

[1:41] What’s wrong with telling your toddler: “You're so smart”?

[3:35] Susan talks about a recent research done by Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford, who studied the effects of praise on grade-schoolers.

[5:25] How does this research apply to babies and toddlers?

[7:35] Why do parents praise children?

[9:20] What does it look like to be a parent who encourages intrinsic motivation?

[11:36] Praising the effort, rather than the outcome, takes practice.

[13:40] Susan talks about how and why not to interfere when a baby or a toddler is trying to achieve a challenging task.

[16:03] How the Montessori approach to demonstrating fits into the equation.

[17:54] Words that can help build self confidence in our children.

[19:35] How to introduce the concept of sharing to children.

[21:10] How early should parents adopt these practices to encourage intrinsic motivation in their children?

[23:40] Jessica reviews the highlights of her conversation with Susan.

Mentioned in this episode:

Brought to you by Lovevery.com

Kinspace

Transcript

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0:00.0	Parenthood is a time of so much change for you and your baby.
0:12.8	A little reliable information can go a long way towards making this new life a good life.
0:18.6	I'm Jessica Rolfe, and this is my new life, a love every podcast.
0:28.9	We parents are a proud bunch. Good job with something I said a lot to my babies. It's
0:34.7	natural to shower them with compliments. When our babies turn to toddlers,
0:38.9	this praise can evolve into, you're so smart. What an amazing artist you are. But too much of this
0:46.0	kind of feedback as our children get older may not help them persist in the face of challenges.
0:51.9	My guest in the podcast gives us some ways to encourage intrinsic
0:55.7	motivation, so our children are motivated to try new things even when it's hard, and make efforts
1:02.7	to pitch in without bribes or rewards. Intrinsic motivation has been a hot topic in recent years,
1:09.4	ever since Angela Duckworth popularized the term
1:12.4	grit. Grit is about teaching your child to welcome challenges and enjoy effort. Joining me to talk
1:19.9	about what we can do now to lay the foundation for grit is Susan Borden, a licensed psychotherapist
1:26.7	and the founder of Kinspace. Hello, Susan. Hi.
1:31.4	So looking forward to this topic. I have so many questions for you. Oh, good. I wanted to start with
1:38.9	what is wrong with telling your toddler, you're so smart. So I just want to say just from the, from the jump, there's nothing inherently wrong with telling your toddler, you're so smart. So I just want to say just from the jump, there's nothing
1:46.4	inherently wrong with telling your kiddo that you're so smart or praising them or having that
1:51.8	intention to tell them how awesome you think they are. But I do think what's important is to think
1:58.2	about the flip side of that and think about the flip side of the importance of praising
2:02.4	the process as opposed to only the result. So not so much about never praise your kids, but
2:08.7	thinking about how we praise them and the quality of our praise. And ultimately with the goal of
2:15.7	building in a love of challenges that allows children to feel competent and powerful and ultimately have a higher sense of self-esteem.
	...

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