Effort versus Performance

Effort Versus Performance

Whether it is an upcoming swim meet or a spelling bee on Friday, children can often suffer from performance anxiety, some of which is perfectly normal and appropriate. However, when the anxiety clearly begins interfering with the child’s participation in the event, then the issue of performance anxiety needs to be considered. Some children who are rather perfectionistic by nature can put a lot of pressure on themselves.

Adults, however, provide added pressure depending upon whether they focus on the child’s effort or performance. It turns out that how we praise children can have a big effect on how they perform depending upon whether you focus on their effort or intelligence.  This insight comes from research by Carol Dweck, who discovered an interesting effect on children’s school performance depending upon whether parents comment on the children’s effort and hard work, or their intelligence and talent. She proposes that we tend to understand success as either the result of innate ability and talent, or the result of hard work and effort.

However well-intentioned, telling your child that he/she is smart and brilliant can inadvertently put pressure on him as when he encounters a problem in his homework that he has difficulty solving. This child may feel that because he could not solve the problem easily, this is an indication that he is not as smart as he thought he was because it required effort. So he gives up. Anything that requires effort is to be avoided and challenges are not welcome.

In contrast, comments that focus on the child’s effort tend to promote greater persistence and a more positive attitude. This has been confirmed in studies on children’s performance on math tests where the feedback in one classroom was on how smart they were and in the other classroom, the feedback focused on their persistence and effort. When given achievement test, the “persistence” group did substantially better.

This point was recognized a long time ago in the book How to Talk So Children Will Listen and Listen So Children Will Talk, by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, who recommended simply describing what you see rather than lavishing praise on your child. Rather than saying to your kindergarten child’s quickly drawn picture, “Oh that is so beautiful,” instead comment, “Wow, there are so many colors in this picture and the house has four windows.” The latter does communicate that the child’s effort was worthy of detailed attention and it brings her attention to what she did that helped make the picture interesting.

So when it comes to providing encouragement for your child, try to focus more on describing the way in which you see him displaying effort and persistence rather than praising him for being talented or smart.

copyright@Edward H Pllimpton, PhD