Don’t Confuse Indiscriminate Praise With Unconditional Love

Many parents believe, as do I, that parenting with large doses of unconditional love creates a warm supportive relationship wherein a child can learn to thrive and grow as a person. The problem as I see it is that many parents confuse indiscriminate praise with this unconditional love.

Praising a child for non-specific behaviors or qualities, such as “You’re a great kid” or “You’re really smart!” seems fine on one hand. You are giving praise, you are noticing your child and are “raising their self-esteem”. However, there are two problems with this type of parenting with general praise.

First, children deserve to receive accurate feedback about specific behaviors which are note-worthy. Look at it from the children’s perspective–receiving this feedback about their specific actions in the world allows them to decide to pursue further demonstrations of their competence. On the other hand, hearing “you’re really smart” gives the child a passive judgement which he/she cannot fully internalize–it’s like trying to digest a big chunk of meat without chewing it–it’s likely to pass through the system un-internalized (if it’s not choked on).

Second, unconditional love has more to do with honoring and accepting your child’s quirks and faults than it does praising behaviors. Though there’s nothing wrong with the spontaneous and loving bubbling up of “You’re a great kid”, my sense is that the spontaneous, welcoming, warm smile during one of your child’s anxious irrational moments will be taken as a much more supportive act. Recognizing and accepting one’s challenges, weakness and vulnerabilities is at the root of self-worth and self-esteem.

As you can see, unconditional love leads to a much more positive (and less adversarial relationship). It fosters self-esteem and defuses anger. Indiscriminate praise, at best, does no harm, but it falls far short of fostering self-esteem and self-worth. For more information about this parenting topic and other parenting child information, go to my website at www.parentingchild.org