Praise Your Kids

There is a lot of advice out there about building intrinsic motivation in kids that has been oversimplified into the idea that we shouldn’t be praising kids or they’ll just be looking around for external validation their whole life. And I think it’s really bad advice!! (Especially if you have a neurodivergent kid.)

Years ago, I took an intensive parenting class from Dr. Chelsey Hauge-Zavaleta to help figure out how to better parent my spicy kid, and she totally turned this idea on its head. She has you aim to praise your kid 100 times a day. Which sounds insane! But let me tell you, it was such a huge positive shift in our parenting and our kids’ behavior. She has tons of free content out there that’s worth looking at, but here are some notes about how to go about it.

-The praise has to be HIGH QUALITY. It’s gotta be specific!! Think of yourself as enthusiastically narrating what they do. “Yeah! You put your shirt in the laundry!” Telling them “good job” from across the room is not doing much.

-You should be close enough to touch them when you deliver the praise. And it helps to seal the praise with touch. A shoulder pat, a high five.

-Praise process and effort, not product. “Wow, you really worked on that drawing” rather than saying the drawing is so beautiful.

-Figure out what kind of praise works for your kid. Some like big gestures and enthusiasm and some kids cannot handle that at all. Your kid might do better with a shoulder tap, a wink and a whispered “dishes in sink—nice.”

Do I manage to praise them 100 times a day?? Rarely, but it helps to aim big. It’s hard to state how powerful it is to reward the behavior and actions you want to see. Most kids—and neurodivergent kids especially—often hear way way more negative feedback than positive. Let your kids feel you SEEING them and all the stuff they’re doing.