One of the best things parents can do to improve their child’s behavior is to give Effective Praise. Changing behavior through praise is effective and powerful as it promotes a growth mindset for kids.
Adults and kids alike
There is a difference between general praise and the behavior skill of Effective Praise. Effective Praise gives your child a specific reason for their positive behavior AND a motivation why they should repeat the action.
When parents combine specific behavior and motivation, they are helping their child gain confidence in their ability to behave well.
General praise looks like, “Good job.” Or, “I’m so proud of you.” Statements like that don’t tell your child why you’re proud of them or what they did well.
Effective Praise would look like, “Great job for putting your backpack away without asking. When you put your backpack away, you’re able to find it in the morning without looking all over for it, and that allows you to be first to the bus stop and gives you more time to play with your friends.”
Effective Praise allows your child to know exactly what behavior they did well, putting away their backpack, and gives them a reason to continue the behavior, getting to the bus first and playing with their friends. Children are concrete thinkers. Having specifics is extremely helpful for them.
The hardest element of giving Effective Praise is finding a reason that is meaningful to your child to continue the behavior. Children are more likely to repeat the behavior if they understand they will be getting something out of it. Often, we give reasons that are meaningful to us and not meaningful to them.
As you consistently praise your child, you will see improvements.
Effective Praise should be given any time a child is doing something well–whether that is big or small. When children have a lot of behavior issues, it can be challenging to find something to praise. No child is so bad that there isn’t something that can’t be praised. It may be small, but it’s there. It could be something like giving you eye contact, looking up from their phone, or putting their clothes on the chair instead of the floor.
Whatever it is, praise them for it. When you praise for small things, the big things will start improving too.
The power of praise should not be overlooked. On the Smarter Parenting website, you can find the behavior skill of Effective Praise. We challenge you to watch it and then to start using it in your family. Using it will change the whole dynamic of your family.
Changing behavior through praise will be one of the best gifts you give your family.
Learn the skill of Effective Praise here: https://www.smarterparenting.com/lesson/view/effective-praise/
For full show notes and transcript visit: https://www.smarterparenting.com/adhd-parenting-podcast/
For a free 15-minute ADHD Parenting Coaching mini-session sign-up here: https://www.smarterparenting.com/coaching/
To keep these podcast coming, donate to Smarter Parenting here: https://www.smarterparenting.com/donate-now/
This is episode 50. Let’s get started.
Smarter Parenting welcomes you to our podcast series, The Parenting Coach for ADHD. Here to heal and elevate lives is your Parenting Coach, Siope Kinikini.
Hello, everybody. How are you? I hope that all of you, my friends, are doing well. I’m reaching out and sending you a huge hug from where I’m at right now because I am super excited to be talking about a skill that is essential for any parent and for children. And that is the skill of Effective Praise. Now before we begin, I do need to give a shout out to the Utah Youth Village who sponsors Smarter Parenting. We are a division of the Utah Youth Village and their mission is to heal and elevate the lives of children and families around the world using proven family solutions. They’re a charity so they exist on donations. And if you found this podcast helpful, please give a donation to Smarter Parenting through the Utah Youth Village.
I also need to give a shout out to a special group of people who help Smarter Parenting move forward. And those people are the team behind the website and also all the videos that we create and edit and upload these podcasts. You would be surprised just how much work it takes to put something like this together. However, I am surrounded by the most talented team and that team consists of three other people.
There is Amy and she helps to edit and create content and manage the content that’s on the website. And also here for the podcast, she does some of the editing here. There’s Rob who’s our videographer and also helps put everything together. So if you’ve seen any of the videos on the Smarter Parenting website, he’s animated all of the animation that is included in there. He’s provided some of the humor that is in there and really helps with a lot of the visuals. And then there’s Dustin, who’s on the team who takes care of the website and he is over all the technical things that happen.
And then my role obviously is I work with families and I help families around the world. So we all come from different disciplines and yet together we are a powerful force for good in Smarter Parenting. So I wanted to give a shout out to my team and actually praise them for the effective work that they do in bringing all of this about so we can reach you, families out there who are in need and are looking for help. You may be wondering, “Wow, those are two big shout outs.” Actually what I’m doing is providing praise. I’m praising them and praising the people who make this possible on this podcast because I think it’s super important that we reach out and we give gratitude to those who help us. So thank you, thank you, thank you to all those people who have made this possible.
Now we’re going to talk about Effective Praise and we’re going to really delve deep into what Effective Praise is. We’re going to talk about how this praise, Effective Praise from the Teaching-Family Model and from Smarter Parenting is different from just regular praise. And combating some of the myths behind we praise our kids too much these days versus we don’t praise them effectively the way that they should be praised. So we’re going to talk a little bit about that. And then we’re going to talk about why it’s important to continually praise your children through all the stages of their lives. So I want to start off by talking about what is Effective Praise? I’m going to go through the steps of Effective Praise just so you can get an idea of what it is and how we teach it in Smarter Parenting and in the Teaching-Family Model.
Now, there are four steps to giving Effective Praise and the reason that we have the steps there is so parents don’t forget a step. This really is a guideline and a map for how you should be giving Effective Praise.
The first step is show your approval or find a positive about what your child is doing. The second step is describe the positive behavior that you have observed. That goes back to the Observe and Describe that we talked about, which is this essential skill that you use. So that should be familiar to you. Step three is to give a meaningful reason of why that behavior is a good thing for them to continue doing. So you want to give it a meaningful reason. And then the last one, the fourth step is to give a reward. Now that is optional, so that isn’t something that you want to do every time. You just can do that when you feel like they should be reinforcing that positive behavior so they can continue to do it.
Again, those steps are show your approval or find a positive in what they’re doing. You want to describe what they are doing well and then you want to give a meaningful reason of why it’s important for them to keep doing that. And then again, the fourth step is optional, which is give a reward. And the give a reward is something that if you really want to reinforce it, then yeah, that’s absolutely something that you want to do. So those are the steps.
Now, how is this different from other praise that you may hear? And you may have heard people talking about we praise our kids too much these days. Kids are too soft because we’ve never taught them the hard things in life and blah, blah blah. In fact, I was recording a podcast with a different podcaster this weekend and we were talking about how Effective Praise is so different than regular praise. And we talked about raising resilient children in this time versus what it was like to grow up in a time that seemed probably what we would consider a lot more difficult or harsh. Those are not my words. That’s what the podcaster talked about.
The reality is that children need guidance and in praise you can still give them guidance. Children these days often get the general praise, which is good job or you did great, but doing good and doing great and saying good job is so vague that it’s not specific enough for a child to know exactly what they’ve done well and why they should continue to do that, which are steps two and three of Effective Praise.
So the difference between Effective Praise is you are actually focusing in on describing a behavior that is done well and you are giving them a meaningful reason for them to continually do that behavior. We’re going to jump into a little bit deeper each of these steps because I think it’s important for you to understand the nuances in that versus just the general praise, which is great job. You did good. I hear that actually quite a bit. I hear a lot of parents praising their children with, “Great job. I’m so proud of you.” Which is general. It’s super general, but it doesn’t really reinforce what they did well and the reasons why they should continue to do that.
In jumping into the steps, step one, which is show approval and find a positive, that actually is a wonderful thing to do because that breaks down the walls. When you find something that your child is doing well, you’re like, “Hey, great job sitting there. You’re doing great paying attention to what I’m saying.” That actually shows your approval and it makes your child feel like warm and fuzzy like, “Hey, I did something right.” And then you described the positive behavior, “You know, you sat there quietly while I was telling you what you needed to do and you nodded your head yes.” Can you see how descriptive that is? And again, that goes back to Observe and Describe. If you haven’t listened to that podcast episode, you really need to jump back there and listen to that because it is such an essential skill that we use throughout all the other skills in Smarter Parenting.
When you describe the positive behavior, when you describe what you’ve observed that they’re doing well, what you’re doing is you’re telling your child, “This is exactly what I’m looking for, this is what you need to be doing.” It makes it very clear. Now, children who are concrete thinkers can’t think in abstractions like adults can. And so when you give them those boundaries in that parameter for the praise, they obviously are going to know exactly what they did well and how to continue doing it well. So you can see that’s very different than just saying, “Good job. You did great.” You can absolutely see a huge difference between that.
Step two, describing that positive behavior reinforces for your child what it is they did well. Helps them know exactly what they did well and it gives them an idea of what you’re focused in on.
Now the third step, give a meaningful reason of why they should continue doing that behavior. This is an essential skill and actually probably the most difficult part of this skill. And the reason that is difficult is you are supposed to give a meaningful reason that is meaningful for the child and not for you of following through with that behavior. Well, let me explain. Parents tend to think in terms of being a parent. And so when you are giving a reason of why it should be important for your child to do something, if you’re thinking like a parent, then that is a disconnect to your child.
Let me give you an example. I had a parent who was praising his child for doing his homework. He was sitting there doing his homework. So he just said, “Hey, you’re doing great.” He described the behavior, “I noticed you are doing your homework. You’re focused, you’re doing well, you completed all ready one assignment and now you’re working on the second. Great.” He did a great job with the first step, which is showing approval and finding a positive. Step two, which is describing the behaviors specifically. Then he followed up with this reason, “You know, when you do your homework, it makes me super happy.” That’s not really meaningful for a child if you think about it. Not as effective. Now you can say that, and it may be true to you, but we’re looking for meaningful reasons that reinforce why your child should continue to study hard. Meaningful things for them.
So I talked to this father about what can we replace that meaningful reason with? And we actually went through a list of things that were important for his son to help him give a meaningful reason that was more powerful. You can give a lot of different reasons, but what you want to do is focus in on a reason that is powerful and meaningful to your child. So we actually moved that out and he had to really, really think about, “Okay, I need to give a reason that is meaningful for my child to continue doing this behavior.”
In doing this homework example, we replaced it with, “It allows you more time to go on and play basketball with your friends after dinner. Because if you’re not done with your homework, then you have to stay after dinner and finish your homework.” This was meaningful for his son. This is something his son looked forward to and wanted to do. So we actually changed the whole interaction by providing that.
And what happened was that reason, that meaningful reason for his son was actually a reward. See how that’s connected. It actually made everything super easy for this father. We Role-played it, we practiced this with him. And what I found is that it wasn’t really difficult for him to not use reasons that weren’t meaningful to him and actually focus on reasons that are meaningful for the child.
Now those reasons that are meaningful for the child may differ as they age. For young children, it may be something as simple as, “Hey, you’re going to receive a marble in your marble jar so you can earn a reward.” Or, “You’re going to get a sticker every time that you do well.” From that to when you’re a teenager, spending more time with friends, being able to use the car, being able to use your electronic device to play video games. I mean, it’s going to change. But again, you are using meaningful reasons that are focused in on what your child wants. Always remember that when you’re giving a meaningful reason to remove your reasons and actually adopt your child’s reasons is why following through with this behavior is important.
And then of course the last step is give a meaningful reward and you want to gauge the reward. You don’t want to give your child a huge reward for following through with something that is fairly simple and you want to stay away from things that are expensive. You want to be sure that it’s measured in and if you can incorporate the meaningful reason like this father did with his son being able to play basketball with the reward, that’s fantastic because that is a reward. So Effective Praise, being able to do that.
One of the questions I get from a lot of parents is, “When should I praise my child? Is it only like once or twice or am I doing it too much or not enough?” Actually, you should be praising your child consistently throughout the day. Anytime you see them doing something that you want them to continue to do, you should be praising them for that. Now, is there a point where you’re overpraising? You’re going to have to be the gauge of that, but I’ll be honest with you, especially with difficult children and children that struggle to understand what they need to do. Effective Praise is a wonderful way to teach them what they need to do, but also to build that relationship and keep them focused. For ADHD children, I often praise them like consistently, consistently for what they’re doing well. In our field or in the Teaching-Family Model, we call it praise approximations. Let me explain what that is just so you can understand how it works.
Praise approximations. That is focused on every small thing that a child is doing well, you are going to praise them for consistently over a period of time based on what is needed. So if your child needs to be praised every minute, I’m going to do that and I’ll do it for small things. Not for huge things, but for small things in order to build up to bigger things.
There’s this example of a teacher who brought in this large jar and he brought in some rocks and some sand and he asked the students to fill up this empty jar with the rocks and with the sand to see how much they could get in there. Inviting the students up, they poured in the little sand and then they put in the big rocks and they found that they couldn’t fit everything into the jar. It was an object lesson. The teacher took them out and then the teacher showed them how to do that. He added a layer of rocks, put in some of the sand on top of that, then put in some rocks. What he found out is he could fill it with everything that was there, which filled this one jar.
And so the same principle applies here with Effective Praise. You can praise for small things, you can praise for big things, but in the end you are going to incorporate a lot of praise in there in order to fit everything that you need to, to bring about the change that you need. So don’t think of Effective Praise as something that I’m going to wait for my child to do well. No, I’m going to praise him for even the little things that he’s doing well.
I was working with a child. She was really difficult. When I worked with the parents, they had a hard time finding things that they could praise her for. The funny thing is as an observer and working with them, I noticed small things that she was doing well and I was able to praise her for the small things. And what I found and what the parents noticed is that she looked forward to me coming over to visit and she looked forward to me engaging with her because I was praising these small things that she was doing well. For example, she would sit there and not listen to the parents, but every time she would look at me I would praise her for that and I would follow these steps. I’d be like, “Wow, you’re looking at me. Thank you for looking at me. You are actually making eye contact with me. When you do that. I want to come down and play toys with you.” And then I reward her by actually sitting on the floor and playing toys with her.
After doing this for a period of time and I was praising her for the small things, she started to comply with larger requests from me, not from the parents, but for me. And in talking to the parents, what I encourage them to do was to praise. It didn’t take a lot of time. I was focused specifically on just the good things that she was doing and she started to feel this connection and rapport with me that she wasn’t feeling with her parents because they were highly critical of everything that she did, and they withheld the praise from her until they felt like she earned it and she deserved it.
I just want to stress how important it is for parents who have children with ADHD to praise their children for the small things that they’re doing well and to praise them consistently throughout the day. That actually helps to increase your ability to communicate, to make a connection with your child in the small, positive things that they are doing. Now, don’t be overwhelmed with all the bigger things yet. Focus on the small things and that actually will increase to the bigger things. Then you can praise for smaller things and then the bigger things. And pretty soon you’re going to find a child that is more compliant, more willing to listen, more engaged with you and they are going to know how to engage because you’ve all ready described specifically what they are doing well through Effective Praise.
Really, if you are listening to this podcast and you have not watched the Effective Praise skills video that is on the Smarter Parenting website, please, please, please go to the website, find the video on Effective Praise and watch it. It gives an example of a younger child and a parent and also a teenager and a parent, and you will see how they integrate Effective Praise into their lives and how effective it can be. Do that. Do that, jump over there and check it out. There are also games and activities that are listed there in how you can teach this and integrate this into your child’s life. It gives you examples of printout form that you can use so you can follow each of the steps and use it consistently. And actually with a lot of parents, I ask them to print it out, print out the steps so they can follow through, and sometimes to actually write down the meaningful reasons because that tends to be the hardest part of giving a meaningful reason of why they should continue to do the behavior.
Now, why is praise so important? I’ve all ready outlined why it can be important for your child. You’re actually telling them specifically what they’re doing well, why they should continue to do that. But in general, we all need validation and Effective Praise is one of the ways that we can give validation to our children. Think about how it feels for you to receive praise. Some people shy away from too much praise and so there’s a gauge there and you’re going to have to gauge it with your child, but you want to be praising your child. If you are not praising your child at least five times, three, four or five times a day, then really you need a mind shift because your child is doing positive things in there and you should be acknowledging those things. And as you do, everything else starts to blossom.
There’s a belief in therapy, and I was taught this early on when I was working with families. That in this system, a system continually maintains its homeostasis or its state of being, but if you altered just one part of the system, the entire system has to adjust. Well, this is what Effective Praise does. Is if you effectively praise, that actually changes your relationship and the entire relationship starts to move into a more positive direction. So as adults, we need validation. As children, they need validation. If you start Effectively Praising them for even the small things, it starts to affect the entire system that is involved with your children. I highly suggest that you practice the skill, practice it until you feel very comfortable doing it and actually implementing it for any behavior that your child is exhibiting.
I do want to share an example of a family I was working with. The young man, he was a teenager and he had a hard time getting up for school in the morning. Very, very typical thing for teenagers who struggle getting out of bed. I was working with his dad and his dad was one of these just really great guys. Super funny, really nice, but getting him out of bed was always difficult. In fact, if he missed getting out of bed on time, he wasn’t ready for the day, he would miss the bus. And then if he missed the bus, the dad would have to take him before work. And if the dad was late, he wouldn’t take his son and his son would stay home.
So we were working through all these systems on how to get him to go to school, to get up on time, sleep, being sure he had enough to rest, enough to eat, alarm clocks being there to continually help him along the way. What we found is that by effectively praising him in the morning for the positive things he was doing, he actually started to engage more in this expectation of getting up on time and getting ready for school. The way that we implemented this is we did praise approximations. We praised for the small things he was doing in the mornings to get ready and gave him reasons of why this was meaningful to him.
Now for the dad, again, step three was one of the hardest things, give a meaningful reason for the child. Because he was saying, “Well, the reason that it’s important for you to get up is so I’m not late for work.” Well, the child didn’t care about that. And so we gave meaningful reasons of why it was important for him to get up to go to school. One of those reasons was, “Well, when you go to school, you’re able to be with your best friend and spend some time with him before school.” That was motivating for him to be there before school started so they could talk and interact and he could talk to his best friend. We integrated that into there.
So dad would wake up in the morning, he would go and give a preliminary wake up call to his son. The alarm clock would go and his son would be groggy and irritated, but his dad would praise him and say, “Hey, great job. Opening your eyes and looking at me this morning.” And so he described the behavior, “You know, when you look at me and you’re opening your eyes…” He’s like, “That tells me that you’re going to be awake and this means that you’re going to be at school in time to talk to your best friend so you guys can visit.” Because his best friend actually had a different schedule than he did. Having that brief interaction in the morning was super helpful for him.
What we found that over time in the praising of even small things like, “Great job getting in the shower. When you get in the shower you smell good, and girls like to be around guys that smell good.” Motivating things and we tied that into a very specific person that he liked. And so we started praising for the small things that he was doing. It took a lot of work at the beginning. I’m not going to lie. It took a lot of praising and consistency over time. However, what we learned was as we continually did this, we didn’t have to praise for the smaller things. As time went on, we actually praised for larger things that he was doing. So it was no longer, “Hey, great job looking at me in the morning when I give you your initial wakeup call.” It was, “Wow, okay, I came in and now you are sitting up in your bed. Great job. When you’re sitting up in your bed, it’s telling me…”
The kid had caught on. He’s like, “Okay, I’m getting that you’re using this formula in here.” But because we kept plugging in meaningful reasons for him of why it was important to continually do this behavior, he began to adopt those behaviors. It became easier for him to do those and eventually we got to the point where, including all the other systems we put in place, he was able to get up on time and make it to the bus and go to school because we actually used Effective Praise and all those meaningful reasons to reinforce to him why all those things were important throughout the day. It’s one of my favorite families that I’ve ever worked with in seeing him make that transformation.
And again, it took some time at the beginning. And like I had mentioned in that example with the rocks and the sand in filling this empty bottle, we started off with a little bit then some bigger things. Every once in awhile he would struggle, but we would fill it again with sand and we would praise for the bigger things. And we continually worked on that until we got everything in there that was motivating enough for him to do it on his own. Super, super powerful.
For parents, one thing that I want to stress is that praising your child once is not enough. You’re going to need to praise them more often. And if you want to see a particular behavior consistently repeated, you’re going to have to praise for that consistently. Now, over time it’s going to become a habit, but don’t feel like you’re going to praise your child one time and they’re just going to get it. They’re not. Children need to practice and they need to learn and they need to be reinforced. So be consistent in your praise. I do want to stress if you’re not praising your child three, four, five times a day for the positive things that they are doing, you need to change. You do need to change because those are the things that will build your relationship. Help them feel like, “Hey, I am doing some things right.” And give them the validation and the connection with you that they need.
I do also want to stress that there is a huge difference between praising and Effective Praising. So Effectively Praising your child follows these steps. Praising your child is general and too much general praise is not helpful for your child. It doesn’t give them any direction, it doesn’t guide them, it doesn’t help them and it doesn’t help you. So don’t waste your time giving general praise. Practice this until it becomes very natural and very normal to you.
Wow, I have talked so much. I just want to give a shout out for all of those people who have contacted us for mini-coaching sessions. Thank you. Thank you for reaching out. Through those mini-coaching sessions, I and you and all of us, are going to be able to address some of those very specific issues dealing with ADHD. Thank you for doing that and this will help you and your child increase in your ability to function and to work through things. So there you go.
Now if you haven’t noticed, I actually used the steps of Effective Praise in that interaction of thanking people for calling in for the mini-sessions. I actually showed approval for them. I described the positive behavior of them reaching out and setting up coaching sessions, and then I gave a meaningful reason of why we’re going to be able to work on the family, build relationships, strengthen them, et cetera. So it’s as simple as that. It really is as simple as providing that type of interaction.
Actually, one of the suggestions that I got from one of the families that I’ve been doing a mini-coaching session with is they found it really helpful if I gave an example of what it’s like during the podcast so they can hear what it’s like and feel what it’s like. Let’s give an example and I will walk through the steps and you’ll see how fast it can be as far as Effective Praising.
I’m going to use my daughter because she’s my daughter and we interact on a daily basis. She took the car to take a lesson, she’s taking some a music lesson. She takes the car and I’m always worried as a parent of where she’s going and what she’s doing and where she’s at. Anyways, I told her to be home at a very specific time and she actually came back two minutes early even though there’s a lot of reasons that she could have been late or that she could have dillydallied or whatever, but she came back early and so I praised her for that.
This is what praise would sound like if I was praising my daughter for coming home early. I’d say like, “Wow, you’re here early.” Step one. Step two, “You are walking in the door two minutes early.” Okay, so I’m describing the positive behavior. Now I’m going to give a meaningful reason, “You know, when you walk in the door two minutes early, what it’s telling me is that you are respecting the rule that we have in place. And by respecting the rules that we have in place, it really makes me want to give you as much freedom as possible. I want you to be able to be with your friends. I want you to be able to go out because I know you’re going to follow this rule. You’re going to come home early. So as a reward, there’s a party tonight. Your friend…” His name’s Preston. I can say his name. He’s not a client or anything, “But your friend Preston is having a party. So I’m going to give you 15 minutes extra beyond curfew.” Because we actually have an earlier curfew than most of her friends’ parents have on their kids. “So I’m going to give you 15 minutes more because you came home two minutes early. Thank you for coming home early. Great job. You’ve earned that.” That’s how the interaction would happen with her.
She walks in early, “Hey, wow, you came in early. Right now you’re walking in two minutes early. Because you walk in early, I mean you just show that you respect the time that we have set and the rules that we have set for you. And because of that, I want to give you more freedom. So tonight, I’m going to give you 15 minutes extra to be with your friends.” Easy peasy. Lemon squeezy. I mean, really it can be as fast as that and that’s kind of longer because she’s an older child and I’m talking through it, but for younger children it could be a little easier.
Let’s say that you saw a child sharing a toy with another child, their sibling. You’d be like, “Wow, you were sharing your toy. I saw you give them your teddy bear. When you give and share your teddy bear with your brother, that just makes everybody happy. It makes your brother want to share with you and me share with you some other things. And because you can share, I’m going share some treats.” Okay, boom. There you go. I opted to give a reward in both of those instances, but the steps have been fulfilled in each of those. You show approval, step one. Step two, you’re going to describe the behavior that you observed, that was sharing the toy. Giving me meaningful reason which is, “When you share, he wants to share. I want to share.” And then give a reward, which was optional, “Well, now I want to share this treat with you.” That all reinforces that whole idea of sharing, which is something that I want my child to continually do.
Can you see how this skill can be very effective? And actually it doesn’t take a ton of time but it is effective because it gives very specific outline for your children on the positive things that they are doing, reasons why they should continually do it and then rewards if you decide to do that, to reinforce that whole idea. Again, we are shaping behaviors and we are creating these things.
For parents who struggle with children who they feel like they cannot praise, you do need to praise, you have to praise your children. You will not gain or build a relationship with them if you do not find positive things that they are doing. It’s as simple as that. Kids will go where they feel validated and if they’re not getting it from you, they will get it somewhere else. Harsh lesson. It’s a harsh lesson, but it’s a true lesson and I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it over and over and over again. Find positive things to praise in your child. It’s a challenge I want to give to you. Find things that you can praise.
You can use this skill with anybody, with adults, with neighbors, with friends, with spouses. In fact, practice it with different people until you become comfortable doing it. Print out the steps so you can follow the steps easily as well.
Wow. I feel like I have just talked and talked and talked, but again, this is something I am very, very passionate about. You can actually address a lot of behaviors through Effective Praise because not only does it praise them for what they’re doing well, it actually teaches them what they should continue to do. And again, that’s the difference between Effectively Praising a child and just generally praising a child. Very, very different things.
I know you can do it. I know you can. I’m giving you the challenge. Praise your children. Count how many times you’re doing it a day. Do it five times a day for five different things that they’re doing well. Give meaningful reasons that are meaningful for your child to continually do that behavior. And you will see changes happening with your child and with yourself and with your relationship.
That’s it from me this week and I am super excited to share more information on more skills that you’ll find on the Smarter Parenting website. Again, a huge shout out to the Utah Youth Village who is a huge supporter of Smarter Parenting. We are a division of the Utah Youth Village and the Utah Youth Village is a charity. So we depend on the donations of people who are motivated to share this message with family and people all around the world. If you can, please make a donation to Smarter Parenting through the Utah Youth Village. I will talk to you again soon with a new skill that we will add onto all of these skills to help you as a parent, build your relationship and strengthen your ties with your children, helping them become independent and happy people. All right, that’s it. Bye-bye.