praise

I've been reading a few interesting articles about praising your child recently. There are in fact 2 types of praise - 'fixed mindset' praise and 'growth mindset' praise. In a nutshell fixed mindset praise is praise that is directed at a particular attribute (e.g. "you're so smart" or "you're so beautiful") without any reference to why that praise was earned, whereas growth mindset praise focuses on the effort and the thought your child put into acting a certain way (e.g. "I like how you put your toys away without me asking you to, it keeps the room tidy"). It's important to offer both types of praise to your child, and I'm trying to do a healthy mix of both. I've started to be more mindful of how I'm praising Baby, as I don't want my praise to end up falling on deaf ears, I don't want my words of praise to become a way for me to lavish love upon my baby boy, and I don't want him to end up seeking his value from my opinion or the opinions of others (something which I think I suffer from). He may be too young to understand me when I tell him I can see how much effort he puts into grabbing his clothing off the cushion, or when I praise him for burping with almost no assistance from me, but better to start forming good habits early right?

As my memory is rather like a sieve these days, the links to the articles are below, in the high likelihood I will need to reread them.

An in depth article about the study into the effectiveness of fixed mindset praise vs growth mindset praise - How not to talk to your kids
http://notjustcute.com/2013/01/14/praise-junkies-part-two/
http://notjustcute.com/2012/06/12/praise-junkies-beware/
http://notjustcute.com/2012/01/24/pondering-praise/