The Form of Praise

So I was listening to an NPR podcast the other day (LINK) where the topic of discussion was how to praise your kids. So appearantly out of the 60-70s came the idea that you should alway praise your kids, at whatever they do, telling them they are GOOD at it. It doesn't matter if they really suck, you should still tell them they did well as a way to build their self-esteem. Sounds reasonable right? Well appearently the best way to motivate your kids is to tell them that they did good at WORKING hard. The idea here is to promote the idea of hard work over inate excellence. It makes sense if you think about what happens when something difficult comes along, the always praised kids might think, 'Oh I'm just not good at that, I just won't do it anymore.' Where as the kids who were told you really worked hard might think, 'Man that was tough, I need to work harder.' Interesting....