Why Saying “You’re so Smart” to Your Child is the Worst Thing You Could Say
It is not a compliment.
I’ve been the “smart child” all my life. And it hasn’t helped me one bit, it’s only made things harder for me.
What do you think happens when you tell your child they’re so smart as a compliment?
If you’ve heard you’re smart all your life, you wouldn’t want to try anything new or difficult that makes you feel dumb?
You don’t want people and yourself to think you’re not smart after all, you have to keep up appearances.
Exactly.
Deep down you believe you’ve fooled everyone in to thinking your smart, AKA imposter syndrome.
You feel like an imposter, deceiving everyone and you’re afraid of failing so you don’t try.
You can’t fail if you don’t try, right?
The most painful part is you live your life thinking you can’t do the hard things that you definitely would have succeeded in if you applied a bit of effort.
But if you believe what everyone says about you, then you think you should be able to master something in the first try.
Either you’re smart enough or you’re not.
And if you’re struggling that means you are just not meant to be. You weren’t born with the ability.
Stanford Professor and Psychologist Carol Dweck calls this the “fixed mindset”. The belief that your abilities and skills are fixed.
You struggled passing your driver’s test in your first try? You’re not a good driver (and you’ll never be).
You can’t paint and you’ve only tried once? “I’m not a good painter.”
Everyone who is now good at something started from zero, they practiced and worked hard to be able to be considered ‘good’ at something.
You think Roger Federer was a great tennis player from the first match he played?
Nothing is impossible if you keep practicing it, but everything is impossible if you never try — Zahra Khalid
And children who are told they are so smart, that’s what they do, they run away from challenges.
They believe they aren’t good enough and failing would shatter their self image.
Because they start lying to themselves too, they desperately try to keep this image of how they see themselves.
One that they know will shatter easily if they try anything difficult because they know it’s not true, but they choose to be in denial as a coping mechanism.
So what’s the solution? If I don’t call my child smart, what do I say when I am proud of them?
You appreciate and compliment their effort, not their genes they were born with.
You say, “you tried so hard, you were able to do it! Well done!”
When they paint something instead of saying it’s the best paining ever and your child is a Picasso, you ask them what colors they used and how they feel about it.
You need to make your child be intrinsically motivated, instead of seeking external validation and your praise all the time.
Appreciating their effort means they know, whatever it is in life they want to do, they will struggle, persevere and put in effort to achieve it.
This is the “growth mindset”, the belief that your skills can be learnt through effort.
It is the Batman to your Joker and the answer to your parenting problems.
