Enhancing a Childs Emotional and Cognitive Development

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Enhancing a Childs Emotional and Cognitive
Development
Rebecca L. Mann Purdue University
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Influential Factors

• Praise
• Ability vs. Effort
• Choices
• Creativity
• Self Efficacy

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Praise

• When is praise productive?
• When is praise detrimental?

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Praise for intelligence

• Experiment varied feedback challenging task,
  but not too difficult
• Group A
• Wow, you got 8 correct, you must be smart!
• Group B
• Wow, you got 8 correct, you must have worked
  really hard.

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Praise for intelligence

• Students then given a choice of task
• Group A Mostly chose easy task
• Group B Mostly chose hard task

Students then given a more difficult task Group
A Enjoyed it less, didnt want to take it home,
felt dumb Group B Enjoyed it just as much,
eager to take it home, thought they needed to
make more effort
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Praise for intelligence

• Students were then given a task similar to the
  first one
• Group A Performed worse than the first time
• Group B Performed better than the first time

Students were then asked to tell another student
about the task Group A Often exaggerated their
score Group B Reported their performance honestly
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and

• Individuals who view their ability level as
  innate you either have it or you dont do not
  persist
• Individuals who view their ability level as the
  result of their effort are more motivated, enjoy
  learning more, and are more likely to tackle
  challenging tasks

Dont get students invested in labels as they
care more about keeping the label than about
learning. Praise can render people passive and
dependent on something they believe they cant
control. (Dweck, 1999)
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Specific Compliments

• good job
• vs.
• Youve learned to write supporting sentences for
  your topic sentence.
• You had a sound hypothesis for your science
  experiment.

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What to avoid

• Unsolicited help
• Sympathy following a poor performance
• Praise following success on easy tasks
• All lead to a perception of low ability

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The Perfectionist Is highly
self-critical
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Signs of Dysfunctional Perfectionism(Schuler,
1999)

• Delayed starts
• Unwillingness to share work
• Extreme response to poor grades
• Feelings of superiority accompanied by loneliness
• Relentless self-criticism
• Feelings of inferiority
• Fear of the future
• High level of anxiety
• Refusal to turn in work or accomplish goals
• Inability to tolerate mistakes
• Inability to cope with ambiguity change
• Inability to share responsibility
• Susceptible to depression following productive
  periods

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What DOESNT work

• Saying, Just do it!
• Nagging and being a watchdog
• Using criticism, ridicule, and threats of extreme
  or exaggerated consequences
• Doing it yourself (Burka Yuen, 1983)

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Seven Strategies that Help (Heacox 1991)

• Assist her in setting reasonable and reachable
  expectations for herself.
• Refrain from criticism.
• Introduce him to new experiences.
• Show that your caring is not based on the
  students performance.
• Create a safe environment.
• Focus on the students strengths and successes.
• Plan incentives and rewards that do not require
  perfection.

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Helping Perfectionistic Kids

• Acknowledge learning
• What did you learn while you were doing it?
• What part did you enjoy most?
• What might you try next time?
• How might you do it differently next time?
• Ask Whats good about it?
• Help the child discover meaning
• What were you thinking when you were choosing
  which colors to use?
• Why do you thing you enjoyed that so much?

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Helping Perfectionistic Kids

• Honor the time invested
• You gave a lot of your time it this. It must
  have been important to you.
• Focus on processes as well as products
• How did you decide to change the experiment in
  the way you did?
• Make mistakes okay.
• Call work practice.
• Model how to make mistakes okay.
• (Smutney, Meckstroth, Walker, 1997)

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The Perfectionistic Great Dane
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Choices

• A child also needs a chance to become a
  decision-maker.
• Allow her to make choices often always making
  either of the possible options acceptable to you!
  
• Let him choose what to wear or what to put in his
  lunch.
• Expand the opportunities for decision making as
  he or she gets older and do not second guess the
  decision even if it outcome is less than
  desirable.

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Parenting and Teaching with Love and Logic

• - raise children who are self-confident,
  motivated, and ready for the real world
• - win-win approach to parenting
• - children learn to solve their own problems
  while gaining the confidence they need to meet
  life's challenges
• - establish healthy control without resorting to
  anger, threats, nagging, or exhausting power
  struggles
• www.loveandlogic.com

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Encourage complexity
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Challenge
Only when challenges and skills were felt to be
high and working in tandem did all the varied
components of well-being - cognitive, emotional,
and motivational - come together for the
students. Concentration was far above its normal
classroom level, and self-esteem, potency, and
involvement also reached their highest levels.
(Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, Whalen,1993, p.
186).
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Bette Midler
I didnt belong as a kid and that always
bothered me. If Id only known that one day my
differences would be an asset.