Unintentional feeding causing unintentional growth?

What you feed, grows. Even when it's unintentional.  

Nowhere has then been more apparent for me than as a father learning to be a better parent.  

Children crave their parent's attention, naturally. And the fastest way for a child to get their parent's attention is to misbehave, which children quickly learn.  

As a parent, one of the hardest things to realize is, in some areas, we need to reprogram our instincts. We aren't programmed to give immediate attention to good behavior; our instinct is to start paying attention when misbehavior occurs. 

But, by rewarding bad behavior with our attention, we are training our children to misbehave. I.e., What we are feeding, albeit unintentionally, is growing.  

Another area where this phenomenon occurs is with praising achievement.  

Our instincts tell us to value and praise winning. But giving all of our attention to results and winning can send the opposite message. This is because studies show that praising results is interpreted by children to mean the only acceptable outcome is an A or first place, and anything else is a failure. This causes fixed mindset thinking, a belief that intelligence and ability are static. (See Carol S. Dweck’s book: “Mindset”)

A fixed mindset child is devastated by failure and develops a real fear of failure, which causes them to be prone to giving up quickly, especially when challenged.  

Ideally, instead of focusing on the result, our attention should focus on the hard work, initiative, overcoming and learning from struggles, and perseverance that produced the result. This is growth mindset thinking, a belief that intelligence and ability can be developed.  

When you praise effort and hard work, it sends the message to children that if they fail, it only means they have more to learn, that they are not there yet. And when they do win, that's a consequence of their hard work and preparedness. 

But, again, just like our instinct is to give misbehavior more attention than good behavior, it is instinctual to give the result more attention than the process.

That's why it is important to remember, what you feed, grows. 

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Ok, that’s all for today. Good luck out there!

#CreateSomethingGreat

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