How rotten are your kids?

In honor of Mother's Day here at Slate, Emily Bazelon investigated whether today's parents, through misguided praise, have inadvertently raised a generation of pampered, incompetent brats. Apparently, children may be better served by praise directed at the quality of their efforts rather than at the quality of their innate attributes. As the uncle of six technically perfect small children, I can't really relate to the article's premise. But, I wouldn't be surprised if your kids need to be cut down a peg or two.

While there's no shortage in the Fray of contempt for today's youth, respondents are surprisingly ambivalent towards Bazelon's seemingly reasonable advice. Degsme takes issue with effort-oriented praise on theological grounds:

What's wrong with head patting? What's wrong with feeling good? Sorry, but this is yet another go round of calvinistic reactionism.

[According to the article:] "We tell them that they're smart or athletic or musically gifted, when what we should be praising is hard work and effort."

Yeah, [only] if you want them to become worker drones with no real definition of self other than work.

Einstein is attributed as having said, "all the hard work in the world won't make up for a touch of genius." Benjamin Franklin pointed out, "Hard work may not kill you - but why take the chance."

Praising only work praises the outcome and not the person. It is precisely the sort of dehumanization that allows the Guanatanamos, the "boot in their ass", and the RagHead/Towelhead comments to flourish.

It is the Calvinist mythos at its worst.

I can't agree that Calvinism is the problem, but if concentrated exposure to a good dose of Catholic dogma doesn't scare the excessive self-love out of your child, I don't know what else could. Speaking of doctrine, Degsme also offers an interesting treatise on praise-ratios, that's worth checking out.

Hi shares the concern that focus on effective praise—of any kind—can reduce our kids to someone else's tools:

One of the main themes in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" was that the tyranny of the future would use positive reinforcement in lieu of negative.

When my kids were small I would go to the zoo and watch a bird show were they showed the power of positive reinforcement on birds. Do you think this training was in the interest of the bird?

[I] see young people who are newly hired struggle in the work environment, more because they feel entitled [than] because they lack experience. They expect to get what they want simply by asking for it. They fail to realize that other people may want something also. [...]

They have a harder time achieving what they want in life because they never get any realistic feedback. Most people just tell them what they want to hear, so they can get what they want from them right now.

From bright_virago's perspective, praise is simply a good idea—even when it is silly:

Of course you provide praise to those workers who are overcoming an obstacle - whether that's timely arrival or poor spelling or learning a new software program or anything else by which their job performance is judged. When I needed my twenty-something assistant to act more independently, I told her that she needed to inventory and re-order supplies without reminders from me. When she did that on a regular basis, I provided positive feedback on her job evaluation.

And, of course you tell your kid that she did a great job cleaning up those toys or her painting has amazing colors or you tell your spouse that the dinner he cooked tastes great or you appreciate that basketful of clean laundry. Those kinds of messages mean I am grateful for the gift of you, a complement to the oft-spoken I love you.

Vague praise is like vague anything else - sometimes funny  but mostly useless, or whatever and junk.

Is this whole hunt for a better parenting technique chasing the wrong fox? While thought doesn't have many kind words to spare for today's youth, he blames more than just parents:

Our 20 somethings have grown up during a fairly bleak time in our society--in their lifetimes: two wars, a five year long fear of terrorism, economic downturns, pension scandals, etc...I watch parents give over the top praise to their often poorly mannered children. It disgusts me, and I know it isn't helpful. However, this is not the only reason that we have a seemingly lazy, unmotivated young work force. We have bigger problems.