Do you praise your children too much?

A new study from The Ohio State University suggests that constant praising of our children can create a narcissist. Narcissistic individuals feel superior to others, fantasize about personal successes, and believe they deserve special treatment. When they feel humiliated, they often lash out aggressively or even violently.

If parents praise for our children’s every “accomplishment”, it may have the unintended side-effect of creating an over-inflated ego. Do you think this is the reason why many young adults seem to have a troubling sense of entitlement?

Now if your child deserves praise, for example a C student who works hard and gets an A on a math test, that’s cause for praise. But when my child remembers to put his dirty dish on the counter, I’m not going to jump up and down with excitement and offer compliments.

Are you raising a narcissist?

If you think that by constantly telling your children how amazing and wonderful they are is going to give them a healthy self-esteem, you’re wrong. You’re likely raising your child to be a narcissist.

What’s the difference between a confident child and a narcissist? Confidence and high self-esteem means that people feel they are as good as others. Narcissists, on the other hand, feel they are superior to others.

Remember my blog on When Parents Think Their Kids are Perfect? I see this many times in school and extra-curricular activities and I shake my head. Yes I love my children to death but I know their strengths and weaknesses too, and I’m not afraid to admit it.

The study involved 565 children in the Netherlands between the ages of 7 and 12, since those are the years when children, the research shows, are able to evaluate themselves as compared to others.

“Children seem to acquire narcissism, in part, by internalizing parents’ inflated views of them (e.g., “I am superior to others” and “I am entitled to privileges”). Attesting to the specificity of this finding, self-esteem was predicted by parental warmth, not by parental overvaluation.”

“People with high self-esteem think they’re as good as others, whereas narcissists think they’re better than others,” said co-author of the study Brad Bushman. “Children believe it when their parents tell them that they are more special than others. That may not be good for them or for society.”

Narcissistic children may experience emotional extremes when they are praised or not praised. Those who also have low self-esteem could suffer from anxiety and depression.

What parents can do

Eddie Brummelman, one of the study’s co-authors, suggests parents be warm and affectionate without telling children they are better than others and without conveying to children that they are more entitled than others.

I don’t think parents should ever compare their children to other children and noting that they are superior. I don’t think you should ever say to a child, “you’re smarter than he is,” or “you’re better at playing hockey than she is”. Instead, you can say that while you have these skills, the other child can offer other skills – all children have something unique to offer.

Jenn Berman, PhD, a marriage and family therapist and author of The A to Z Guide to Raising Happy and Confident Kids, says, “We are becoming praise junkies as parents. We’ve gone to the opposite extreme of a few decades ago when parents tended to be more strict. And now we overpraise our children.”

Sincere praise

Experts say that if praise is sincere and genuine and focused on the effort not the outcome, you can give it as often as your child does something that warrants a verbal reward. For example, when my son worked really hard and made rep hockey, which he had been working towards for a long time, we praised his efforts. If he hadn’t made the team, we still would’ve praised his hard work towards reaching that goal.

But when he worked hard on a social studies project and thought he would get an A but came home with a B, we still praised his efforts. Praising the effort and not the outcome means recognizing your child when she has worked hard to complete a school assignment, cook dinner or completing a large chore.

Do you praise your children too much?

Photo: Joel Marie Kubassek