I’ve been following a discussion about praising our special children on an internet support group. The topic has been about whether praise is healthy or harmful to children and about why children react negatively to our attempts to praise them. I blogged on this early this month, but there's so much to consider.

Praising a child may truly not be the best thing for them, especially if it's "overdone" in their eyes. I say this knowing that our society is “praise happy” when it comes to “building children’s self-esteem”. So just uttering these words may cause your fur to rankle. But, praise, done wrong, even with healthy kids, backfires.

I like what one mom said about “noticing” vs. praising. Noticing that a child is doing something positive, something you wish he or she would repeat is different than praising. Sometimes even noticing is too much for the child to handle, especially if our children have trauma and attachment issues that cause them not to trust the “motives” behind our praise as being pure. Our children often have a hard time believing they are worthy of the praise we levy – it doesn’t match their self-image. So, in short, they dismiss us as either liars or too stupid or weak to “get it” about who they really are. They can also see our praise as our attempt to control or manipulate them. In fact, as this same wise mom pointed out, we need to think about what our motives are behind our praise. Usually we’re praising a child because we want to reinforce the behavior, which really is a form of manipulating them, isn’t it?

But wait, this doesn’t mean that I don’t think you should let a child know when they’ve done something right. It’s just that I think we often go so overboard with it. It’s the same reason that I cringe when teachers use treats for behavior modification. It all feels so contrived.

With LuLu, I’ve found that expressing my appreciation (and praise) of what she does works better when the statements are about me and my gratitude. “Thanks for doing _____, it really helped me today,” is an example. Or “I really appreciate it when you ______.” Now, if her attachment to me was still at the total rejection stage, this approach would not work either. She would make darn sure never to do anything that helped me, if I told her directly that it had. But focusing on me and how I feel about her actions is safer than directly praising the actions...because she just can’t handle that much direct praise.

Even more safe, if the child rejects any direct positives from you, is to let the child “overhear” the praise. Tell your spouse, your mom on the phone or a sibling something positive about the child’s actions and let them overhear it. With younger kids, tell the dog or a stuffed animal - talk in third person. The message is so much less threatening and better received.

Another key is to say it and drop it, being very matter-of-fact. “I liked that you_____,” is all that needs to be said, then move on. In our exuberance at our child’s accomplishment, we can quickly go on and on, gushing about how proud we are.

Now that I’ve spent the first part of this blog telling you how not to praise your child, I’m going to tell you that feeding your child positive messages about themselves is very important. Many of our children coming from foster or orphanage situations have very distorted self-images and play a crucial role in impeding their emotional health. We have to find ways to increase the positive and decrease the negative. So, as tricky as it is to praise a child, I can’t advise against stopping all praise. Instead, we have to be smart about how, when and what to give positive feedback to.

And we have to read the signs. Many parents report that when they praise their special child the child’s behaviors get worse. Then the parents get really frustrated. We take it personally. After all, didn’t the child just disrespect us and reject the love we were trying to deposit into their soul?

Well, they did reject the praise, since it didn’t match their self-image. But rejecting us is really a defense mechanism. And if we’re strong enough (and clever enough with our parenting strategies) we can hang in there and figure out ways to get that positive message deposited in there.

One way I like to do this is by asking questions. If I notice that LuLu is doing something she is particularly proud of (artwork often falls into this category). I ask her about it. “What do you think of this drawing?” If she tells me something positive then I affirm that I’ve noticed it too or add something positive to the conversation. If she tells me something negative, then I ask her why she is thinking that. While asking our children “why” about anything can be risky business, it gives her a chance to self-reflect. There are windows of self-reflection when a child is feeling safe enough to tell you that they really don’t feel good about themselves or their efforts. And if they're old enough, as LuLu is, you can point out that perhaps their self-image isn't reality. That in fact they may not be as bad, stupid, mean, or horrible as they think they are. Again...matter-of-factly commenting, as a detached observer is usually more successful than interjecting our own emotion.

I use the questioning as a gauge of where she’s at, to figure out how much positive can be inserted. I never tell her she shouldn’t feel a certain way, because that shuts the whole conversation down.

It’s a delicate dance for sure…figuring out how to interject some positive into your child’s negative self-image in a way that the unpraisable child doesn’t reject it as meaningless or manipulative. It takes really understanding your child and his/her nuances. And it takes understanding your own motives and re-evaluating the purpose of your praise.

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