Praises or Acknowledgement??

Praises – by and large people would agree that we shouldn’t be miserly when it comes to praising someone or also a child. Generally, we hear people say “a child needs a lot of praises to grow up into a confident adult”. I personally wouldn’t agree with people who advocate praises. I would rather vouch for acknowledgement. There is a very fine line between praise and acknowledgement. Where praise is usually used to influence, manipulate and direct a certain behaviour or repetitive chore; acknowledgement extends support to the child, making him/her more self reliant in the long run rather than looking for assurances from people around him/her.

Most of the times we want our children to be confident and self dependent. But are we really succeeding in doing so? We hear this very often – “dad, please see my work, do you think the teacher will like it?” or “is this good?”, seldom do you see children get in an open ended discussion with their grown-ups. Usually, a child becomes unaffected to those praises and stop responding to them in the long run. For example, you are playing karaoke and you score 100 points irrespective of how unmelodic you have been.

Acknowledgement, on the other hand offers support and confidence to the child. Acknowledgment does not evaluate the child. For example, if your child has helped you pick up his toys – there are two ways u can tell your child….1. Wow!!! You are a good helper………(praise) and 2. Thanks for helping me pick up the toys so quickly. Now we have more time to play outside. ……(acknowledgement).
The first statement - praise……..maybe the child has just picked up one or two toys and you exaggerating the act by praises. Next time, it’s most likely that your child may not respond to your request. The 2nd option …..Does recognise the efforts of your child and in addition gives him a logic too…..that he gets more time to play too.

Here are a few examples of praises vs. acknowledgement:
ACT: After a lot of toiling you child has managed to build a tower of blocks.
PRAISE: Wooooaaahhh!! That’s terrific!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: I am amazed to see that you kept trying even when the blocks fell over and over!!

ACT: When your child is trying to colour some picture and comes to you and asks if it is good or not, but doesn’t look too contented with the colouring that he has done!!!
PRAISE: Aww…that’s great! You’ve done it well sweetheart!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Why are you looking sad darling? Do you think we should fix it? Or you would want to leave it for now?

Giving a child an honest feedback is more important than to simply praise them; a feedback, which would describe their accomplishments and not judge them (good or bad). An honest feedback would give your child a sense of who he/she is, without setting the must and must not’s of behaviour. Acknowledgement preserves their self-esteem too.