A Response to a Letter

Here is a comment posted from a reader on a December 2 article I wrote:

Children need acknowledgment and encouragement, not praise. The type of praise that Alfie Kohn criticizes the most is the one used as a "positive reinforcement", e.g., praising good behavior to encourage a child to behave similarly in the future. In this case, the praise becomes a manipulation tool, the interaction between the adult and the child unauthentic, and the relationship between them suffers.

It is difficult for me to respect someone who demonstrates little respect for others. It's one thing to disagree with someone and quite another to insult them by name-calling. Perhaps, the author has not really tried to understand the theory and research behind Alfie Kohn's works.

Here is my response. I wrote this a long time ago. It was in response to Alfie Kohn's theory on praise:

There is a great debate among some adults about praising or rewarding children for good deeds. The early childhood classroom is supposed to be value free and reward free for the good of the child’s real self esteem.

The argument is: if we reward children for goodness, won’t that actually deprive them of the natural pleasure of knowing that they did something of value? Isn’t the knowledge that they did something good enough?

The argument continues to gain speed with the idea that adults who reward children are trying to manipulate the child and that adults are looking out more for their own convenience and material good than the child’s. I think the opposite is true, and I have good reason to believe it.

Having grown up in a house that never praised, never rewarded and counted all compliments and positives as emotional bullets, I can say from experience that the lack of appreciation, approval and praise from the adults who are supposed to rear and guide you was crippling and demoralizing. Growing up in the dark of support was about as painful as growing up diseased.

When other children received hugs and congratulations and even small presents and rewards for half or a fraction of my own achievements, and I received nothing, not a word, not a smile, not even a moment to treasure, not even on my birthday, my sense of fairness and loss taught me that I was not likable and therefore a social outcast doomed to loneliness and rejection for the rest of my life and it was my fault.

If those who are closest to me could not say, “Good job” then, as I reasoned, I must be a terrible person – certainly not worth fighting for, and certainly not missed if suddenly I should die – even by my own hand.

So what saved the child with pernicious thoughts of death? There were adults in my small life who did compliment me, teachers, neighbors and an occasional relative who secretly winked well enough that I began to believe that perhaps through the keyhole of my dark room there was some way out of believing that I should spend my life alone with visions of a cottage in a deep wood where the friendship of animals and plants became my haunting refuge filling my imaginary future.

As a child, I brought letters home from teachers who praised me to the skies, and the letters were scorned and I was scorned, humiliated and punished for being praised. But still the truth of the letters existed, and in the mind of a child, choosing between those who are supposed to love you and a stranger’s momentary praise was too involved. It was confusing at best.

As a young adult, the lack of praise contributed to a perception that most other adults simply did not like me and would never like me. As a social outcast, I would rear my children alone and even suffer the humiliation that my husband really didn’t like me, and really was sorry he had married me.

As an older adult, those thoughts still trigger unbelievable pain and suffering. Through the love and support of the children I spend hours praising and rewarding, I have come to realize that life is too short not to express the love and affection in one’s heart, that life is a beautiful and wonderful adventure and each day should be filled with lots of praise and joy that is communicated from one person to another freely and spiritedly. Thoughts of manipulation are as far from my scope as China.

So when I am reminded that today there is a whole early childhood theory that wants to pull praise and rewards from children’s hands based on the idea that a child will intrinsically understand his own goodness and enjoy his untainted reward, I cringe.