How Not to Talk to Your Kids

They underrate the importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they need from a parent.

http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/

How Not to Talk to Your Kids

The inverse power of praise.

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• By Po Bronson
• Published Aug 3, 2007

(Photo: Phillip Toledano; styling by Marie Blomquist for I Group; prop styling by Anne Koch; hair by Kristan Serafino for L'Oreal Professionnel; makeup by Viktorija Bowers for City Artists; clothing by Petit Bateau [shirt and pants])

What do we make of a boy like Thomas?
Thomas (his middle name) is a fifth-grader at the highly competitive P.S. 334, the Anderson School on West 84th. Slim as they get, Thomas recently had his long sandy-blond hair cut short to look like the new James Bond (he took a photo of Daniel Craig to the barber). Unlike Bond, he prefers a uniform of cargo pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of one of his heroes: Frank Zappa. Thomas hangs out with five friends from the Anderson School. They are “the smart kids.” Thomas’s one of them, and he likes belonging.
Since Thomas could walk, he has heard constantly that he’s smart. Not just from his parents but from any adult who has come in contact with this precocious child. When he applied to Anderson for kindergarten, his intelligence was statistically confirmed. The school is reserved for the top one percent of all applicants, and an IQ test is required. Thomas didn’t just score in the top one percent. He scored in the top one percent of the top one percent.
But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness that he’s smart hasn’t always translated into fearless confidence when attacking his schoolwork. http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/