Praise and Encouragement

I think criticism is good and praise is good, as are rewards and punishments. No one would deny that say Japanese, Korean and Chinese parents are far more critical of their children because of their cultures then Americans are and their children do much better in school as a result.

On a personal level, the kids I know who have been given nothing but praise thier entire lives and spoiled rotten tend to turn out to be the most emotionally unstable, miserable people around when they cant get what they want, whereas people who learned that they werent the bees knees from strict parents tend to be the most stable people.

 

This is interesting that you bring this up. I recently had a discussion about this with some classmates (what a surprise). I actually had the same response that you did (shocker).

There is intense pressure for conformity. They live under tremendous pressure. There is a high suicide rate because of this.

 

It's not just american culture. It's pretty much the same here in the Netherlands. I think modern society in general places too much value in "you need to be a strong solitary individual who can get by without all this fluff". Even though nobody can really get by in any decent way without attention, affirmation and praise.

It just doesn't work that way, and it never will. And like I was telling someone yesterday, "because I can get by without it" is a bad reason to withhold basic emotional and psychological nourishment. I don't know why it's considered so bad to encourage someone in our society, seems pretty foolish to me.

EDIT: And incidentally giving people these things doesn't mean withholding grievances. But it seems far more acceptable to tell someone all the things they're doing wrong than telling them anything they're doing right. There needs to be a balance.

 

I admit I don't know the facts on that, please show me the difference in suicide rates for kids in the US and Asia. And attribute it to factors such as negative criticism and not say poverty.

 

The praise needs to be for the action. I think that American children (some not all) may have a sense of entitlement. This is due to the fact that they are told they are GOOD. It is not the action that is good. They are good. This is an important distinction. IF they are GOOD then others are BAD. It is the action that should be praised. "I like that you pushed your chair in" is very different from. "You are so good! You pushed your chair in! You are a good girl/boy."

This may seem like splitting hairs but there is a big difference.

 

Not suicide related, but you might want to brush up on the concept of hikikomori too.

 

Yeah I totally think its splitting hairs and isn't much of a difference.

 

I think there's got to be balance. If you praise and compliment children no matter what they've done, they won't know how to gauge good actions from bad and will end up directionless and unstable. On the flip side, if you're overly critical, then they'll be very judgmental of themselves and won't know when to give themselves a break. Either extreme is pretty unhealthy. Giving kids love and attention when they've at least tried their best, and reasonable punishment when they've not, will probably result in the best outcome.

 

I think this isn't just a Japanese thing, a lot of people withdraw socially, they're called introverts.

 

Sorry Eniko, I also stand corrected

 

There is great benefit to criticizing people who do something wrong, it shows them that they are... ding ding ding. Wrong. Im not talking about beating children, I am talking about responsible parents telling thier kids when they are wrong. I once stole a candy bar from a store as a kid, my mother saw it, told me how dissapointed she was in me, yelled at me and made me feel horrid then forced me to walk back into the store and give it to the clerk and apologize. I have never stolen again.

How would she have handled that with positivity? Ohhhh Billy I am SO GLAD you stole, now I have the chance to bond with you and teach you right from ummm well I cant say wrong it would be criticizing you... You are an individual and I hope that you will make the right choice, I will reward you when you do! Yeah I totally would have ate the candy bar in front of her.

Care to prove this and then please also prove that its because of negative criticism.

Yeah in theory, in reality they become so full of themselves and so ridiculously short sighted to everyone else that they end up burning all thier birdges away in life and sit around going "why doesn't anyone loooooooove meeeee" But why speculate, please post your proof for this stuff.

 

I compliment sparingly. That may be bad, but I think the fact that it makes each compliment more valuable in comparison counts for something. I'm not sure how much that has to do with the culture, or how I was brought up or what I was taught.
To summarize, I've learned that I should feel good about success, and that I'll get some help feeling bad about failure. That might have just happened to complement my personality, or my personality could have been partially formed by it — that's hard to tell. But from my point of view, positive reinforcement is overdone in American culture, especially in the school system. More accurately, attempted backlashes against competitiveness have been repeatedly bumbled, resulting in such absurdities as tournaments in which "everybody wins." If people want to emphasize cooperation over competition (a noble enough goal, though I do not see the twain as mutually exclusive), then they need to modify a lot more than what they call the results; the whole circuit of competitions needs to be changed from the ground up. They should either be replaced or restructured. Going through the standard process only to disregard the results so that the bell curve is squashed will only leave everybody dissatisfied and nothing accomplished.

These are both good examples. East Asian children are subjected to far more academic pressure, and a lot of success results. A lot more suicides result, too (especially around the time of the infamous exams), but I'm hesitant to condemn the practices based on that.
From within my extended family, I know of a number of examples of spoiled rotten kids who were not disciplined or criticized. They also tended to have distant, uninterested parents, though, and the spoiling was done out of convenience.

 

This.

There is a place for both positive and negative reinforcement with children. Discounting 1 or the other is silly.

 

x2

 

this is to point out a classic case of swinging the pendulum, if swung to one side or the other then you get a child that is deficient either spoiled for lack of a better word or either depressed or agressive.

you have to find your middle ground.