Your child has climbed to the top of the slide, what do you say when they look down at you? Are you on auto-pilot (like many of us) and shout out the blanket phrase "good job"? Many of us do this! We get caught in the "good job" cycle and continuously praise our children with this phrase that doesn't really provide our children with the right information. When we yell out these blanket phrases like "good job", "awesome", "you're so smart", "so pretty" we are guiding our children to feelings of extrinsic motivation. This is showing them that the way others view them is more important than how they feel inside, or their intrinsic motivation. We want to curb this habit so that our children can focus on the details of what we are noticing. We want to acknowledge, not praise, and to do this we focus on describing what we see. So when your child does climb to the top of the slide you can say something like: "you made it to the top" or " I see you up there" or "wow thats really high up there". Instead you are describing what you see or asking questions, so that the child can focus on what they did and not be so wrapped up in the praise and the need for validation in everything they do. We want children to feel good, but with the right type of words, so that they can process and internalize the words and begin to feel good inside about the accomplishments they have made!

Here are some things you can try out instead of good job (excerpt from the book recommendation below):
Look at you.
That's a tall ____ you created.
You worked hard on solving that problem.
Wow, that looks tricky. You are trying to build a _______ and it's not easy.
How did you do that?
You did it!
You know how to do it.
You're wearing a fancy dress.
You put all the _____ in a row.

Be patient with yourselves parents, this is a hard thing to get over, but I know you can do it!

Book Recommendations: It's OK not to share...and other renegade rules for raising competent and compassionate kids. by Heather Shumaker         LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this book!

Activity for Later: Obstacle course! Set up different obstacles for your child inside or outside; pillows on the floor, areas to jump in, tunnels, crawling, balancing things, walking on a line, etc.. Practice giving them details, rather than blanket praise. Children are working on increasing their confidence levels and physical abilities and you are working on changing the "good job" cycle, another win, win!