18 ms·

Praising children for effort rather than ability (2021)

167 points by charles_f 3y ago

maerF0x0 3y ago
> 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.
- com2kid 3y ago
  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.
  - imchillyb 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      > 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 3y ago
        > 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 :-)
      - lazyasciiart 3y ago
        > I don't think I ever had to write down the date a battle happened. Maybe not, but if you didn’t know when the battles happened you’d have a very difficult time identifying how they influenced each other.
  - jimbob45 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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 3y ago
      [deleted]
- eternityforest 3y ago
  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"
- Misdicorl 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      But isn't that what "unconditional" demands of you?
      - layer8 3y ago
        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.
      - jader201 3y ago
        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 3y ago
- bruce511 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    > 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.
- bmitc 3y ago
  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.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > 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..."
  - Guthur 3y ago
    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.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
      Lol, I loved how true this is, damn
  - taeric 3y ago
    I mean, would you? It is literally a defining capability for high level performance. Take a breather, enjoy success, but then look at it. Though, make no mistake, there is a ton of variability in kids. I think I could reasonably do this with one kid, but I couldn't with another. And some kids need pressing, some don't seem to.
- MaxfordAndSons 3y ago
  If your child calling you fat would cause you to revoke your love for them, I hope you're not considering parenthood.
  - crummy 3y ago
    there's an "and" in that sentence, not an or.
- corethree 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    You're picking and choosing in either circumstance, and attempting to mold them in either circumstance.
    - corethree 3y ago
      No conscious choice. I just let my emotions guide the praising. Let fate mold them.
      - gsinclair 3y ago
        A judicious balance of “what comes naturally” and “what research shows is a good idea” is probably best.
        corethree 3y ago
        What research. And what is the definition of best? Generally speaking eons of evolution has shaped "what comes naturally" to be the parenting traits most effective at enabling survival of the fittest or some other trait that enables mass propagation of genes. But survival of the fittest is just one possible definition of "best".
      - lazyasciiart 3y ago
        You think your subconscious is “fate”?
        corethree 3y ago
        Just an expression. I don't use conscious choice. Subconscious choice is more similar to what we understand as fate.
- rusk 3y ago
  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.
- freeopinion 3y ago
  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.
  - screye 3y ago
    That's one of the annoying realities I am slowly having to face. Among highly technical ICs, the people who are paid $500k/year often do tend to work 2x the people who get paid $200k. Sure, these people are also more efficient, more effective and more knowledgeable. But, most of all, they work some insane hours. It's incredible, they are thinking about work when they're eating, sleeping, on vacation...it's like an obsession. I am in one such ~60 hrs/week job right now, and everyone in an IC role that's paid more than me, works more hours than I do. Yeah, my (supposed) compensation went up with this job hop, but in IC roles, hourly rates stay the same. I love my work & my top 1% coworkers. But man, I look at the ones who are 10 years older than me, and that is not the kind of life I want to be living. I know a person who made millions before 25, and this person had never so much as taken a real vacation, watched a random TV show or played a computer game, despite always having the financial capacity to do so. I am not sure if there is dollar value for which I would give up those precious moments from my teens and 20s.
  - wrp 3y ago
    In the psychological research on domain expertise and performance, a common observation is that while greater expertise/performance is generally recognized to be the result of greater effort, people at lower levels vastly underestimate just how much greater effort.
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  > 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.
- doctor_eval 3y ago
  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. Edited to add: and have fun
- giantg2 3y ago
  I agree. Fuck working hard. Working hard leads to being taken advantage of unless you have some leverage and know how to use it.
- Condition1952 3y ago
  I was convinced by Alfie Kohn’s “Unconditional Parenting” and “Punished by Rewards”. Praise sometimes hides lack of real interest so I give feedback
seeknotfind 3y ago
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.
- JenrHywy 3y ago
  This is a good point. In practice, you need to acknowledge effort, ability and outcome. If you're thinking about areas of study or work, you really want to pick something you enjoy where you can produce quality outcomes and that almost always means ability + effort. One of my kids basically sailed through his first 12 years of schooling on pure ability and zero effort. He's now learning the hard way that innate talent only gets you so far. His brother doesn't have the same innate academic ability, but is a natural grinder. He's finding the later years of schooling are easy to adapt to because he can pick things he's good at and knows how to put in the effort. In terms of praise, we over-index on effort because it's a cross-cutting concern. This is especially true at younger ages where kids can't choose what they're studying. So if they get a C in French but maxed out all the effort criteria, I'm more than happy with that - and it's something for them to keep in mind when they're picking subjects later down the line.
chongli 3y ago
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 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-14088-001
- pacbard 3y ago
  Open access link: https://psyarxiv.com/ba7pe/download https://psyarxiv.com/ba7pe/download
gnicholas 3y ago
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-growth-mindset-why-were-doing-students-a-disservice/2017/06 https://www.edweek.org/education/opinion-misinterpreting-the...
- asddubs 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    [deleted]
- lyapunova 3y ago
  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".
petecooper 3y ago
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 https://strschool.co.uk
- jen20 3y ago
  I very definitely received several A*5 grades in a different grammar school - ours used the letter for attainment and the number for effort.
_8j50 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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...
nineplay 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
    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.
jp57 3y ago
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.
- cykotic 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    The state of the art in this area is that training and studies are almost as trustworthy as intuition.
    - cykotic 3y ago
      I very much doubt this is true. Do you have any training in this area? I’m guessing no.
lapcat 3y ago
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 3y ago
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.
JoshTko 3y ago
Studies like this seem to confirm my hypothesis that humans are truly just like LLMs and parenting is alignment.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
csours 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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. (Edit: I’m describing a function in paragraph 1, and a pure function is especially easy to digest as the ideal candidate for a UOW).
  - csours 3y ago
    I think this is also an interesting approach, I like it.
matrix_overload 3y ago
Terrible advice. People are different, very different. They are good at different things and bad at different things. The key to success in life is finding the few things you are good at, and building on top of them. Also, finding things you are terribly bad at, and bringing them to a tolerable level. If you want kids to be successful in life, you need to help them discover their strengths and weaknesses, not teach them to blindly follow the process that is more important that outcome.
iraqmtpizza 3y ago
terrible idea to fetishize effort. this leads to self-abuse and things like participatory economics. not to mention inefficiency and, in the extreme, famine. is the world so well off that results can be deprioritized and take a back seat to energy expenditure? and if that's the case, give me back my incandescent lightbulbs.
cgio 3y ago
From a Greek song: A part I am of your machine And my son the spare He’ll do good work in your employment He is made of the best materials
zarzavat 3y ago
Children are people and like any people they can tell when you are having an inauthentic interaction. Just be a normal person to your kids, don’t try to “hack” them. Secondly, I really enjoyed mathematics at school, but it was always way too easy for me. If my parents had followed this advice I would have never got any praise at all, which would have been extremely demotivating. Praise your kids for their efforts, and also praise them for their abilities.
- nocontextpls 3y ago
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superchig 3y ago
It's worth considering what people mean when they say "hard work." Ever since I read a LessWrong post called "Pain is not the unit of Effort,"[1] I've come to realize that hard work has always implied suffering for me. If I spend a half-dozen hours dealing with drivers issues on Linux, someone might consider me hard-working. Other people would consider it a massive pain in the ass, and for that reason, they'd probably consider it a lot of hard work. But it doesn't seem that way to me, and it's probably because I find that sort of activity engaging and (relatively) painless. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bx3gkHJehRCYZAF3r/pain-is-not-the-unit-of-effort https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bx3gkHJehRCYZAF3r/pain-is-no...
sameerds 3y ago
I am a parent of two, and I honestly don't understand these kind of posts. When a child comes home excited about some great marks, all we say is "Awesome, good for you" and celebrate the moment. Then at 7pm when the child comes back from play, we sit down for home assignments and whatever needs to be studied next. EDIT: minor typo
GuB-42 3y ago
It sounds just as unfair to me. If some kid finds a way to get results effortlessly, if it is honest, it should be praised. Results are what matter in the end, and I think clever shortcuts are as praiseworthy as hard work. Later in life, people don't get paid for effort. And hard work is an ability too, not everyone is "wired" for hard work (ex: ADHD).
- chris-tn 3y ago
  Maybe the article fails recognize that “being smart and innovative” is an ability too and it’s praise-worthy. > Results are what matter in the end, and I think clever shortcuts are as praiseworthy as hard work. Later in life, people don't get paid for effort I generally don’t agree with this. Result is all that matters but count many times you can get it with clever shortcuts, most time efforts do pay off and get you what you want. Praising clever shortcuts can encourage cheating that what I fear the most. Once that gets into your mind, hard to get out

167 points by charles_f 3y ago

> 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.

com2kid 3y ago
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.
- imchillyb 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    > 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 3y ago
      > 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 :-)
    - lazyasciiart 3y ago
      > I don't think I ever had to write down the date a battle happened. Maybe not, but if you didn’t know when the battles happened you’d have a very difficult time identifying how they influenced each other.
- jimbob45 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
    [deleted]
eternityforest 3y ago
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"
Misdicorl 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    But isn't that what "unconditional" demands of you?
    - layer8 3y ago
      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.
    - jader201 3y ago
      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 3y ago
bruce511 3y ago
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 3y ago
  > 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.
bmitc 3y ago
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.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > 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..."
- Guthur 3y ago
  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.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
    Lol, I loved how true this is, damn
- taeric 3y ago
  I mean, would you? It is literally a defining capability for high level performance. Take a breather, enjoy success, but then look at it. Though, make no mistake, there is a ton of variability in kids. I think I could reasonably do this with one kid, but I couldn't with another. And some kids need pressing, some don't seem to.
MaxfordAndSons 3y ago
If your child calling you fat would cause you to revoke your love for them, I hope you're not considering parenthood.
- crummy 3y ago
  there's an "and" in that sentence, not an or.
corethree 3y ago
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 3y ago
  You're picking and choosing in either circumstance, and attempting to mold them in either circumstance.
  - corethree 3y ago
    No conscious choice. I just let my emotions guide the praising. Let fate mold them.
    - gsinclair 3y ago
      A judicious balance of “what comes naturally” and “what research shows is a good idea” is probably best.
      - corethree 3y ago
        What research. And what is the definition of best? Generally speaking eons of evolution has shaped "what comes naturally" to be the parenting traits most effective at enabling survival of the fittest or some other trait that enables mass propagation of genes. But survival of the fittest is just one possible definition of "best".
    - lazyasciiart 3y ago
      You think your subconscious is “fate”?
      - corethree 3y ago
        Just an expression. I don't use conscious choice. Subconscious choice is more similar to what we understand as fate.
rusk 3y ago
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.
freeopinion 3y ago
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.
- screye 3y ago
  That's one of the annoying realities I am slowly having to face. Among highly technical ICs, the people who are paid $500k/year often do tend to work 2x the people who get paid $200k. Sure, these people are also more efficient, more effective and more knowledgeable. But, most of all, they work some insane hours. It's incredible, they are thinking about work when they're eating, sleeping, on vacation...it's like an obsession. I am in one such ~60 hrs/week job right now, and everyone in an IC role that's paid more than me, works more hours than I do. Yeah, my (supposed) compensation went up with this job hop, but in IC roles, hourly rates stay the same. I love my work & my top 1% coworkers. But man, I look at the ones who are 10 years older than me, and that is not the kind of life I want to be living. I know a person who made millions before 25, and this person had never so much as taken a real vacation, watched a random TV show or played a computer game, despite always having the financial capacity to do so. I am not sure if there is dollar value for which I would give up those precious moments from my teens and 20s.
- wrp 3y ago
  In the psychological research on domain expertise and performance, a common observation is that while greater expertise/performance is generally recognized to be the result of greater effort, people at lower levels vastly underestimate just how much greater effort.
saiya-jin 3y ago
> 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.
doctor_eval 3y ago
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. Edited to add: and have fun
giantg2 3y ago
I agree. Fuck working hard. Working hard leads to being taken advantage of unless you have some leverage and know how to use it.
Condition1952 3y ago
I was convinced by Alfie Kohn’s “Unconditional Parenting” and “Punished by Rewards”. Praise sometimes hides lack of real interest so I give feedback

seeknotfind 3y ago

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.

JenrHywy 3y ago
This is a good point. In practice, you need to acknowledge effort, ability and outcome. If you're thinking about areas of study or work, you really want to pick something you enjoy where you can produce quality outcomes and that almost always means ability + effort. One of my kids basically sailed through his first 12 years of schooling on pure ability and zero effort. He's now learning the hard way that innate talent only gets you so far. His brother doesn't have the same innate academic ability, but is a natural grinder. He's finding the later years of schooling are easy to adapt to because he can pick things he's good at and knows how to put in the effort. In terms of praise, we over-index on effort because it's a cross-cutting concern. This is especially true at younger ages where kids can't choose what they're studying. So if they get a C in French but maxed out all the effort criteria, I'm more than happy with that - and it's something for them to keep in mind when they're picking subjects later down the line.

chongli 3y ago

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 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-14088-001

pacbard 3y ago
Open access link: https://psyarxiv.com/ba7pe/download https://psyarxiv.com/ba7pe/download

gnicholas 3y ago

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-growth-mindset-why-were-doing-students-a-disservice/2017/06 https://www.edweek.org/education/opinion-misinterpreting-the...

asddubs 3y ago
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 3y ago
  [deleted]
lyapunova 3y ago
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".

petecooper 3y ago

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 https://strschool.co.uk

jen20 3y ago
I very definitely received several A*5 grades in a different grammar school - ours used the letter for attainment and the number for effort.

_8j50 3y ago

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 3y ago
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...

nineplay 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  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.

jp57 3y ago

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.

cykotic 3y ago
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 3y ago
  The state of the art in this area is that training and studies are almost as trustworthy as intuition.
  - cykotic 3y ago
    I very much doubt this is true. Do you have any training in this area? I’m guessing no.

lapcat 3y ago

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 3y ago

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.

JoshTko 3y ago

Studies like this seem to confirm my hypothesis that humans are truly just like LLMs and parenting is alignment.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

csours 3y ago

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 3y ago
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. (Edit: I’m describing a function in paragraph 1, and a pure function is especially easy to digest as the ideal candidate for a UOW).
- csours 3y ago
  I think this is also an interesting approach, I like it.

matrix_overload 3y ago

Terrible advice. People are different, very different. They are good at different things and bad at different things. The key to success in life is finding the few things you are good at, and building on top of them. Also, finding things you are terribly bad at, and bringing them to a tolerable level. If you want kids to be successful in life, you need to help them discover their strengths and weaknesses, not teach them to blindly follow the process that is more important that outcome.

iraqmtpizza 3y ago

terrible idea to fetishize effort. this leads to self-abuse and things like participatory economics. not to mention inefficiency and, in the extreme, famine. is the world so well off that results can be deprioritized and take a back seat to energy expenditure? and if that's the case, give me back my incandescent lightbulbs.

cgio 3y ago

From a Greek song: A part I am of your machine And my son the spare He’ll do good work in your employment He is made of the best materials

zarzavat 3y ago

Children are people and like any people they can tell when you are having an inauthentic interaction. Just be a normal person to your kids, don’t try to “hack” them. Secondly, I really enjoyed mathematics at school, but it was always way too easy for me. If my parents had followed this advice I would have never got any praise at all, which would have been extremely demotivating. Praise your kids for their efforts, and also praise them for their abilities.

nocontextpls 3y ago
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superchig 3y ago

It's worth considering what people mean when they say "hard work." Ever since I read a LessWrong post called "Pain is not the unit of Effort,"[1] I've come to realize that hard work has always implied suffering for me. If I spend a half-dozen hours dealing with drivers issues on Linux, someone might consider me hard-working. Other people would consider it a massive pain in the ass, and for that reason, they'd probably consider it a lot of hard work. But it doesn't seem that way to me, and it's probably because I find that sort of activity engaging and (relatively) painless. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bx3gkHJehRCYZAF3r/pain-is-not-the-unit-of-effort https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bx3gkHJehRCYZAF3r/pain-is-no...

sameerds 3y ago

I am a parent of two, and I honestly don't understand these kind of posts. When a child comes home excited about some great marks, all we say is "Awesome, good for you" and celebrate the moment. Then at 7pm when the child comes back from play, we sit down for home assignments and whatever needs to be studied next. EDIT: minor typo

GuB-42 3y ago

It sounds just as unfair to me. If some kid finds a way to get results effortlessly, if it is honest, it should be praised. Results are what matter in the end, and I think clever shortcuts are as praiseworthy as hard work. Later in life, people don't get paid for effort. And hard work is an ability too, not everyone is "wired" for hard work (ex: ADHD).

chris-tn 3y ago
Maybe the article fails recognize that “being smart and innovative” is an ability too and it’s praise-worthy. > Results are what matter in the end, and I think clever shortcuts are as praiseworthy as hard work. Later in life, people don't get paid for effort I generally don’t agree with this. Result is all that matters but count many times you can get it with clever shortcuts, most time efforts do pay off and get you what you want. Praising clever shortcuts can encourage cheating that what I fear the most. Once that gets into your mind, hard to get out