When a child solves a hard puzzle, what we say next changes more than parents typically realize. "You're so smart!" feels supportive but quietly teaches the child that ability is fixed, that struggle signals a lack of intelligence, and that hard tasks should be avoided to protect their self-image. "You worked really hard on that — I noticed how you tried different ideas" delivers something fundamentally different: a frame in which effort, strategy, and persistence are the real story. Forty years of research, led by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and her colleagues, has documented how dramatically these two patterns of feedback diverge in their long-term effects on children.
What the Research Actually Shows
In a now-classic series of studies, Mueller and Dweck (1998) gave children a moderately difficult task. After they completed it, half the children received praise for being smart ("You must be smart at these problems"), and the other half received praise for effort ("You must have worked hard at these problems"). The two groups then diverged sharply. Children praised for intelligence avoided harder challenges, became more anxious about being judged, and were significantly more likely to lie about their performance afterward. Children praised for effort sought out harder challenges, persisted longer, and showed measurable improvements in performance over time.
Subsequent work by Gunderson and colleagues (2013) followed parents and toddlers from 14 to 38 months and connected the type of praise parents naturally used with the children's mindset and motivation five years later. The pattern was clear: families who emphasized process praise (effort, strategy) raised children with more growth-oriented thinking; families who emphasized person praise ("you're smart," "you're talented") raised children more likely to give up when work got hard.
Praise vs Encouragement: The Practical Difference
Praise and encouragement sound similar but operate differently. Praise evaluates the child as a person; encouragement notices what the child did. The first creates pressure to keep being good; the second creates room to keep getting better.
- •Praise: "You're so smart." Encouragement: "You really thought through that problem."
- •Praise: "You're a great artist." Encouragement: "I noticed you tried three different colors before deciding."
- •Praise: "You're so good." Encouragement: "You waited patiently — that took self-control."
- •Praise: "You're a natural reader." Encouragement: "You worked on that hard word until you got it."
- •Praise: "You're amazing." Encouragement: "You kept going even when it was frustrating."
When Praise Is Still Fine
The research isn't a blanket condemnation of all praise. Spontaneous expressions of warmth — "I love you," "I'm so glad you're here" — are not the issue. The concern is specifically about evaluative praise tied to performance: telling children that successes confirm their intrinsic ability and (by implication) that struggles call that ability into question. A useful rule: comment on what the child did, not what the child is.
Building a Growth Mindset Beyond Praise
Praise is one input among many. Children also build mindset from how parents talk about their own struggles, how they respond to failure, and what they treat as the goal of effort.
- •Talk about your own learning. "This is hard for me — I'll keep trying." Modeling beats lecturing.
- •Add the word "yet." Replace "I can't do this" with "I can't do this yet." Dweck's team has shown this small change measurably shifts persistence (Yeager et al., 2019).
- •Make mistakes safe. When children see that errors lead to learning rather than punishment or disappointment, they take more risks.
- •Praise the process, not the outcome. Notice what the child tried, not what they ended up with.
- •Avoid comparisons. "You're the best in your class" links self-worth to ranking and undermines intrinsic motivation.
Common Misunderstandings of Growth Mindset
Growth mindset is not the claim that anyone can do anything with enough effort, nor is it about constant positivity. Recent meta-analyses (Sisk et al., 2018; Macnamara & Burgoyne, 2023) have refined the original picture: mindset interventions produce modest effects, work better for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and are most effective when combined with concrete teaching of strategies — not as motivational pep talks. The honest summary: how you respond to your child's effort and struggle matters; saying the magic word "effort" without context does not.
References
Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 33–52.
Gunderson, E. A., Gripshover, S. J., Romero, C., Dweck, C. S., Goldin-Meadow, S., & Levine, S. C. (2013). Parent praise to 1- to 3-year-olds predicts children's motivational frameworks 5 years later. Child Development, 84(5), 1526–1541.
Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., et al. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature, 573(7774), 364–369.
Sisk, V. F., Burgoyne, A. P., Sun, J., Butler, J. L., & Macnamara, B. N. (2018). To what extent and under which circumstances are growth mindsets important to academic achievement? Psychological Science, 29(4), 549–571.
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.