
Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children's Motivation (1998) [pdf] - EvgeniyZh
https://psychology.stanford.edu/sites/all/files/Intelligence%20Praise%20Can%20Undermine%20Motivation%20and%20Performance_0.pdf
======
moyix
There is an interesting and critical look at Dweck's work on "growth mindset"
here:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/08/no-clarity-around-
growt...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/08/no-clarity-around-growth-
mindset-yet/)

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/10/i-will-never-have-
the-a...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/10/i-will-never-have-the-ability-
to-clearly-explain-my-beliefs-about-growth-mindset/)

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/22/growth-
mindset-3-a-pox-...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/22/growth-
mindset-3-a-pox-on-growth-your-houses/)

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/07/growth-
mindset-4-growth...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/07/growth-
mindset-4-growth-of-office/)

~~~
tn13
Thanks for this. Whenever I see a research that seems intuitive and also
politically correct I like to see what the critics have to say.

------
Practicality
I tell my child she is smart AND that that isn't enough for us. We know she is
smart, but so are we and we can tell when she is slacking and lying.

It's actually working very well, but it took quite a while for her to believe
us. In the long run she is showing a deep appreciation for how honest we are
with her.

This would likely work with most smarter children. If you don't play mind
games with them they will stop trying to play mind games on you.

\-- Edit on my side note here -- She still plays games with most other adults
but I would be a hypocrite to try to eliminate it completely. Mostly I just
caution her on how it erodes trust and trust is very valuable. Besides, most
adults are not completely honest with her so it's only fair.

~~~
hinkley
The developmental advice I've heard is that you should praise the act, not the
attribute.

That is, if they do something clever, you praise the clever thing they did,
not the fact that they're clever. I know that probably sounds like splitting
hairs, but kids and adults have at least as many issues communicating as
adults and other adults have.

~~~
colanderman
It's not splitting hairs at all. "That's so clever" means "do something like
that again to get praise". "You're so clever" means "you don't need to do any
more work to be praised".

~~~
hinkley
As adults we can often be imprecise in our praise of others and expect them to
just understand that we meant it as a complement.

If you tell an adult 'wow you really are clever' it usually means that you
appreciate what they did for you or the team and you're trying to say thank
you too.

------
lossolo
I can confirm that. When i was child, every teacher said to me and my parents
that i am so gifted, so smart. And i thought i am so smart that i don't need
to spend so much time on school like others. So i missed on school a lot. In
high school there were classes on which i was less than 50% throughout the
semester. And it was ok, i needed only 2 last weeks to pass all the tests. In
last year i did the same, again i needed to do tests because i had low grades
and needed to pass whole semester on that tests. But this time there was a
teacher of my native language (literature etc) and she told me "I know you
will pass the test but you was more than 50% of time absent on my lessons i
will not let you take test" and i was shocked. Why? Why she didn't let me take
the test, i would pass it. And then headmaster of my school told my parents
that "lot of kids are coming every day to school, they learn, they do homework
for every class, they are hard workers and then there is your son, gifted,
smarter than the rest, he only needs 2 last weeks to learn and pass the tests,
he is not coming to class, he is not doing homework, how he looks in contrast
to other students? What example he is giving to them? That you do not need to
work hard, you only need to be gifted and smart and you can go by. There is no
justice in this, we can't make that kind of example, showing that you do not
need to come to school, make homework and still get promoted to next year like
all those kids that come every day to school, are hard workers, learn, do
homework". They didn't promoted me to next class, i needed to repeat it. That
was the most valuable lesson i had in that school.

EDIT: What i wrote about lesson was not meant in a good way. As someone said
in comments i was punished for being different - that was the lesson.

~~~
oldmanjay
The lesson they taught you is politically palatable to a lot of people, but it
strikes me as gross. That it was the most valuable thing you learned in that
school underlies just how pointless the entire exercise really was.

~~~
grkvlt
Not sure. The lesson for _others_ that was being promoted by his behaviour was
certainly bad: "That you do not need to work hard, you only need to be gifted
and smart and you can go by." Now, it's not really his fault that he is not
being challenged, so the school messed up, at least partly, here. They fixed
the problem for the other students, but not for him. I think the point made in
another comment, that he should have been made to attend classes, but given
actual challenging work that matched his abilities, is correct.

At school I was probably similar, and thinking back basically an awful child,
for much of the same reasons. But at least in some of my classes (maths, for
example) they recognised that just following the standard course at the same
pace as everyone else was a waste of my time, and allowed me to work on the
course material for the next years classes, which was at least a little more
interesting, and some kind of extra-curricular maths problems as part of an
inter-school competition that were much more interesting.

OT - the maths problems didn't always hold my interest, and when I couldn't be
bothered doing the actual work of proving something rigorously, I instead
wrote a brute-force solver in PASCAL, that produced the correct solution. Then
I had the challenging task of persuading people that this _was_ actually an
acceptable method of solving a problem. I can't remember if I succeeded, but I
think I gave the example of the computer proof of the four-colour theorem that
I had read about in New Scientist.

------
Fordrus
Putting a little TL;DR up here on top, because I'd really like to see folks'
answers to this: What's the simple-language equivalent of, "You're so smart,"
or "That was so smart," but for _intellectual effort_?

Now, regularly scheduled thoughts :) :

What is a good, short method/word for praising effort?

with my 8.5-month old, "Good Job," specific variants on it ("Good Job climbing
that staircase, tiny!") and such have worked wonderfully, but I seek something
more-

It's so easy to praise a child's intelligence - "You're so smart!" "That's so
clever!" \- but much harder to praise effort, in my experience so far, because
"I can tell you worked so hard to do that, that's so great!" just doesn't roll
off the tongue very well! And this is important- "Good job!" is at the nexus
of how I praise my little boy partially because _he totally understand it_.
He's got that, even if he may not know the individual words exactly, he
absolutely knows what Daddy means when, "Good job, baby!" comes out of daddy's
mouth. I have VERY LOW FAITH that I could get, "I can tell you worked so hard
to do that, that's so great!" to work the same!

(Incidentally, I also now feel I know more about why, in America at least, we
often say, "I'm doing good," and variants thereof, instead of "I'm doing
well." "Well" just isn't in the primal vocabulary quite as deeply, maybe
because of its association with "Well, I was going to, but then I didn't,"
type of statements. "Good" is simple and meaningful, and I often find myself
telling my son he's done something so "good," and then correcting myself a
little, because, well, I want to teach him correct grammar, but more than
that, I want to communicate with him meaningfully - and "good" gets a meaning
across with which he's already familiar, while "well" does not, and has other
common uses.)

So what's the simple-language equivalent of, "You're so smart," or "That was
so smart," but for _intellectual effort_?

Maybe I need to invent a word for this and see if it catches on! :D

~~~
300bps
I've always said, "You're a hard worker" to my three kids. I've never told
them they were smart and have emphasized how much more important hard work is
over intelligence.

Oldest is 12 now, all three do very well.

~~~
Fordrus
I'm already working on getting my little one to go for the idea that
intelligence == hard intellectual work, not innate ability, and "You're a hard
worker!" is pretty good, and I think you for it!

I'm still searching for more, though, because "You're a hard worker," has
actually been one of the things I've been trying, but it often feels- wrong.
Stilted, like I'm trying too hard to teach instead of just sincerely offer the
poor kid the damn praise. ;) Maybe I just need more practice, but I feel like
there's room for improvement in the language there. :D :)

------
lifeisstillgood
Stop trying to game your kids.

Praise them whatever. Love, security, praise, attention, just go for it.

I doubt very much that all the noise around raising children can be filtered
out to be able to differentiate between sentences.

Just raise kids with love and fun.

~~~
pasquinelli
"Stop trying to game your kids."

i really like that, nice and succinct.

i figure that the ways that i am which are outside of my control, or even my
awareness, dwarf the ways i am that are within my control. my efforts to be a
good parent are almost insignificant compared to, i don't know, my posture and
facial expression while speaking with the cashier at the grocery store, and
all the other things like that.

maybe your last sentence should be, "Just raise kids with love and fun, and
work on your own damn self."

~~~
thanatropism
Khalil Gibran: "Your children are not your children

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you.

And though they are with you, they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite.

And He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hands be for happiness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies,

So He loves the bow that is stable."

------
mkane848
See, my parents did this thing where they'd tell me how smart I am all the
time, then whenever there would be an argument or a disagreement "Oh, you're
just SO smart and we're all SO stupid".

I'm already one of those people with a generally dry/sarcastic sense of humor
(think Ruxin from The League, "I can't even tell when you're joking" kinda
thing), so I have a hard time telling when I'm actually being an asshole or
condescending or not, because while I seriously try to watch myself I still
occasionally get the feeling that I came off the wrong way or, well,
condescendingly. "You just think you're sooooo smart..."

------
swalsh
It's funny how it seems each generation takes a new approach to motivating
children. My wife and I try to take a "results are the goal" approach to
complimenting my son. When my mother is watching him, she compliments his
intelligence. My grandparents seemed to take more of a "helps to be made from
good material" kind of approach.

------
RMcNeely
Suddenly my life makes so much more sense.....

~~~
nibs
Gifted underachievement goes a lot deeper than reinforcement. Eventually,
gifted people learn synthesis comes more easily to them and can learn to coast
or become anti-social as a result and still get by.

Peter Thiel on his thoughts re: Elon Musk: "[He is] very smart, very
charismatic, and incredibly driven -- a very rare combination, since most
people who have one of these traits learn to coast on the other two."

Quote source:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2g4g95/peter_thiel_te...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2g4g95/peter_thiel_technology_entrepreneur_and_investor/)

~~~
HiroshiSan
Was Elon always this way? Or did he end up working on one trait that was
lagging behind?

------
nitrogen
Could it not be equally harmful to a smart kid to give them the impression
that their intelligence is worthless? It seems there should be a balance where
kids retain their motivation while also learning how to make the most of their
personal advantages _and_ disadvantages.

If a smart kid is always taught the convenient fiction that everyone is
exactly the same, then when they interact with an athletic kid who dominates
them at sports but struggles academically, what conclusion will the smart kid
draw?

And finally, is this "praise effort and self esteem" movement responsible for
the current wave of anti-free-speech protests on college campuses?

~~~
colechristensen
>Could it not be equally harmful to a smart kid to give them the impression
that their intelligence is worthless?

That just doesn't make sense. Praise your kid for doing not for being. Who's
advocating teaching smart kids everyone is the same? It seems like any child
is going to realize this isn't true.

>is this "praise effort and self esteem" movement responsible for the current
wave of anti-free-speech protests on college campuses?

Absolutely not.

That is a result of the cultural admiration of protesting / fighting for
rights / rebelling against X. Admiration of the real civil rights movement,
environmentalism, etc.

The problem is that as a society we're running out of clean cut black and
white issues (no pun intended) to be opposed to. There are still problems, but
not nearly as many _simple_ problems. Things are complicated these days.

So they're straying off into the weeds trying to attack complex social issues
with the same strategies that worked against simple ones and coming out
looking like fools. And likewise the targets of their protests are straying
because complex issues don't have a big bad evil you can hate, and that nuance
and detail are being lost.

The once reasonable protesting class are being supplanted by increasingly
unreasonable protestors who are rebels searching desperately for a cause.

~~~
nitrogen
_Who 's advocating teaching smart kids everyone is the same?_

It seems that has been the general trend in elementary education since I was a
kid. As an example, I remember the year that all the talent trophies were
changed to be the same size, and everyone got one just for participating.
Athletics were an exception, though; it was considered acceptable to be better
at sports. It was a noble attempt to try to boost the underprivileged, but
just ended up confusing everyone.

 _The once reasonable protesting class are being supplanted by increasingly
unreasonable protestors who are rebels searching desperately for a cause._

This is an interesting explanation for the phenomenon I had not yet
considered. I am not yet convinced it is the right or only one, but I will
keep it in mind.

~~~
Spooky23
In my school, it was in 1993/1994.

They went from "tracked" classes that mixed the 20 year old 9th graders with
smart kids. Everyone got to suffer together.

~~~
bpchaps
I was a "smart kid" in high school and found myself getting bored in the
honors class to point of getting kicked out and pushed into the "normal" class
as the only white kid, 90% of the time.

It was honestly probably the best thing that happened to me. It helped me
build empathy and grounded me to accepting that intelligence is only one piece
of the puzzle. I'm now working in a position that gives me huge intellectual
freedom.

There is a silver lining.

~~~
Spooky23
There's a difference between the "honors" classes with the kid/parent drama
and "normal" students. In can see where not being wrapped up with the super
achiever people would be a benefit.

In my specific case, it was a poor rural district with four 20-25 student
sections. Mixing up the barely literate and disruptive kids made things
harder. In my senior year my project partner in Civics was a fellow senior who
basically couldn't write.

The only escape was AP classes -- but we only had AP English, US History and
Calc.

As part of "raising standards" they started requiring advanced math. We were
unable to compete the material, and I learned a lot of math while cramming for
the annual exam -- which in my state was standardized and a key to college
admissions.

~~~
bpchaps
Yes, agreed. Though, it's important to note that the number of honor's
programs without that class of drama is small without expensive schooling or
certain types of homeschooling.

Not having to do 'difficult' homework was the catalyst that gave me the
freetime to work on programming which is another reason why getting kicked out
was great.

Not sure why I'm thinking about it or why I'm even mentioning it, but this
happened in the same city Ray Bradbury grew up. Everybody in the school was
required to read 451, which was treated as a homework with uninterested
students' contempt. It's very interesting to be raised in the city that
influenced much of his writing.

------
pwthornton
My daughter is only two, but she is clearly smart. Some people tell her how
smart she is, but I largely do not. What I try to do instead is to encourage
her to keep trying and keep pushing and that failure is temporary. When she
was one and learning to climb up and down stairs (which she loves to do over
and over again), I would keep telling her "you can do it" as she went down
each step and tried to gauge whether or not she could go further. When she was
finished I would tell her, "you did it," and she started saying "I did it"
when she completed a flight.

She also stumbles and falls a lot as we climb different things and walk over
different surfaces. I tell her "keep going" or "you've got this" and she gets
right back up and keeps trying. I find that if you focus on saying that she'll
be alright or making sure she is not hurt (when she is clearly not), she'll
dwell on that, start crying and stop doing what she is doing.

This story and the other links published here got me thinking about this.
Innate ability is clearly important when you really think about it, but what I
want to instill is this idea that it's normal and natural to fail along the
way to success and that even if you are really talented at something, you'll
have setbacks.

------
Jugurtha
If you're interested by this, here's a piece[0] by Carol Dweck. She's an
interesting researcher.

[0]: [http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-
leadership/oct0...](http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-
leadership/oct07/vol65/num02/The-Perils-and-Promises-of-Praise.aspx)

------
cel1ne
Of course it can.

What does an intelligent kid do? Find the easiest way to do a task or question
whether the task is necessary at all. That's just humans conserving energy.
Which is smart. This is not the hard part for them, they excel at this.

Effort is consciously fighting against the drive to stop working. THIS is the
hard part. Above average children never have to learn this, because they get
through school and life that easy. It's only when they are forced to leave
their comfort zone, when problems show up.

Intelligent Children who aren't kept or lead out of this effort-avoidance
(which is a kind of motivation as well: the motivation to avoid effort in
order to conserve energy) also tend to get worse grades after they got good
ones.

 _Because praising them signals them that they actually overachieved and can
therefore put even less energy into accomplishing a task._

So the way to go is praising them for doing something that _they didn 't want
to do_ or for _repeating effort_.

------
ak39
What's the general impact on a child's motivational levels after being called
"stupid" and/or "lazy"?

~~~
Practicality
Usually they believe it. This is actually pretty well documented in
psychology, although I am having some trouble finding a link at the moment.

------
pwthornton
Part of the problem with telling your kid that they are smart is that most
parents think their kids are smart. The average IQ is about 100. It's one
thing to tell an objectively intelligent person that they are intelligent, but
it's quite another to get someone who doesn't have great innate gifts thinking
that they do and then perhaps causing them not to work harder.

You can outwork someone and make up for an intellectual or physical
disadvantage, but you may be less inclined to do so if people tell you that
you have greatly innate gifts than you do.

Let's also keep in mind that a lot of very intelligent people are able to
focus and think more abstractly, allowing them to be very efficient workers. I
just see a lot of parents telling their kids how smart they are, thinking it
will build up their self esteem, but I wonder if this is counterproductive if
they are actually of more average intelligence.

------
edtechdev
It's called "growth mindset" (vs. fixed mindset). There are books and hundreds
of articles on it.

I've found this TED talk the best explanation of growth vs. fixed mindset:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN34FNbOKXc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN34FNbOKXc)

------
thanatropism
I have a pretty good boss. Of course, we're all adults. Anyway, our boss has
this way of treating everyone differently -- knowing which buttons to push.
With me he'll always give me the occasional harder task saying "This is going
to be easy for you"; with my coworker, he has to press harder and say "this is
important, don't screw it up".

I was recently depressed and without really having been told anything he gave
me this hollywood-movie pep talk along the lines of "it's important that you
know that you have great talents so don't sweat the small stuff and tell me if
you're in trouble".

Maybe this is pretty much off-topic, but the point I wanted to make is that
people react to different things and much of the art of squeezing motivation
and productivity out of them has to do with understanding this.

------
serg_chernata
Is there an implication that children also seem to think that intelligence is
not variable while amount of work is?

------
qwertyuiop924
People say I'm smart. I don't buy it. I know a lot of things, sure, but anyone
can do that. And I'm lazy, so I tend to be a bit slack about everything, but I
like to think I can get things done when it counts. After all, when I apply
for college, I'll be competing with all kinds of smart kids. And dammit, I
happen to like learning things, and as much as I am lazy, my personal desire
to learn things kinda outweighs that.

Which may be why I've spent so much time when I've been ostensibly slacking
off trying to understand monads, reading HN, and, every few months or so, once
again trying to bash my way through SICP...

------
jedberg
TL;DR: If you're interacting with a kid, try to avoid saying, "you're so
smart!" and instead say, "You've picked this up really quickly" or "you're
such a hard worker". If you tell a child they are smart then they will stop
trying either because they assume they can get by on their intelligence or
because they are afraid of failing and loosing your praise about how smart
they are.

~~~
dllthomas
"You worked really hard on it that!" seems a bad thing to say without having
observed the kid working hard. I know if I'd been told I worked hard on
something that came easily, it would have cost the speaker credibility.

My tentative plan, for my son, is to phrase it as a question. "Did you work
hard on this?". If so, praise the hard work. If not, "let's find you something
more challenging".

~~~
timthorn
In addition, the work being praised needs to be effective.

~~~
taylorwc
I disagree. If your child does something to the absolute best of his/her
abilities, but is not very effective, isn't that still praiseworthy?

I have a two year old who exhibits no mastery of the English language, but I
praise her when she tries out a new word on for size and keeps attempting to
perfect it.

~~~
hashkb
You're praising effective practicing habits. You can praise learning from
mistakes. That's great.

I always took "A for effort" to be extremely patronizing because I was trying
to do the thing right.

~~~
gohrt
The problem is the "A", not the "A for effort". "A for results" just
highlights an arbitrary bar that is likely too low or too high.

------
erdevs
Has this study been heavily replicated?

------
tn13
How about "that is great but can you do this?" and give him an harder task.

------
AStellersSeaCow
As an aside, I think this sort of upbringing is a significant contributing
factor to the personality type that shows up frequently in the most toxic
online groups (MRAs, gamergaters, PUAs, etc). In my glimpses, it's been
abundantly clear that many of them are highly intelligent and not much else:
single, with shitty jobs, no exceptional skills, and dim prospects for the
future. But because they grew up being told they were going to be rich and
happy because they were so smart, it's clearly the rest of the world's fault
that they didn't end up with the life they feel entitled to.

~~~
fragola
My parents unfortunately did this to my brother. Especially my mom: "oh you're
SO handsome/smart/awesome, all the girls will love you, you should go to the
best colleges" etc. He is an extremely unpleasant person now, and definitely
not popular with women.

It is not entirely parents' fault. I mean, a ton of men have had the same type
of conditioning, but then go on to have a series of uncomfortable epiphanies
in high school and college that lead to self-improvement and later happiness.
But it for sure is setting your kid up for misery, whether temporary or
permanent.

------
whoops1122
in China, we tell our kids that he/she is crap and he/she better work hard
now. or the crappy kid next door is going to crap on him/her.

~~~
duaneb
Seems like that would be psychologically damaging. It's certainly how
helicoptor parents are seen in the US.

------
im4w1l
If you exaggerate the importance of practice, people will do more of it, and
become better. But what is the opportunity cost?

------
admax88q
Oh hey its time for this thread again.

------
decisiveness
One problem is that the children's IQs weren't considered in relation to the
task at hand. A more useful study would have included how praise for ability
and effort effect children in separate classes of intelligence. To be remotely
helpful, at the very least, we should know the range and mean IQ of the
children in the study.

------
GarrisonPrime
I clearly remember getting hugely uncomfortable whenever as a child my
intellect was praised by an adult. Made me want to completely stop doing
anything, lest it draw more of their biased, narrow-minded judgements of me.

------
visarga
Praise intelligence -> makes them give up easier.

Praise hard work -> could be a subtle attempt at manipulation.

Maybe instead we should ask them what _they_ want to do, and support their
creative activities.

~~~
GrinningFool
What a child wants to do is what a child wants to do _right now_. If you ask
the same question a few minutes later, you could get an entirely different
answer.

As adults who have lived through being children, a surprising percentage of us
actually do know better than a small child what's best for the small child for
a surprising percentage of their lives.

~~~
visarga
I read once about a highschool boy, a good student, who was shocked when a
teacher asked him "What do YOU want to do?". What? he thought. This question
has never crossed my mind. Nobody told me I can make my own mind. It was
always "teacher knows best" and "parent knows best" and "be a good student and
learn what we teach you, do what we tell you".

I wrote from this point of view, but I agree that parents and teachers know
better most of the time, I just don't know if it is good to try so hard to
make sure the child doesn't make any "wrong" choices.

~~~
GrinningFool
Sorry, I missed this reply. I think I was considering a younger age range -
and even so, I agree. They need to be allowed to make their mistakes.

------
Spooky23
Do what makes sense for your kid and you. Everything else is mostly nonsense.

------
Theodores
I was not a special snowflake and I was not praised for anything ever by my
parents. My exam results were below average and every school report was along
the lines of must try harder. Recently I did think about this and whether I
developed a co-dependent aspect to my personality along the way. Co-dependency
does hold people back in life and I feel that a little bit of praise along the
way would not have gone amiss.

I worked from age 14 doing paper rounds, gardening jobs, babysitting and I
also had a Saturday job in a bicycle shop. All of these opportunities I made
for myself, there was no nepotism or anything like that. I never got into
trouble or had must-try-harder in these environments. My
customers/clients/bosses were not easy to please, but I did please them and
the feedback I received was genuine praise and thanks. I had much more
disposable income than any of my teachers, I also worked as many hours a week
than them. (I know they mark homework and do other stuff after the bell goes).
I did have some development issues from doing 40-60 hours of on-your feet hard
work week in week out with no holidays ever (plus school, with the equivalent
of at least a 10K jog every day) so painful ankles was normal to me.

From this experience I gained quite a few mentors, and, in the world of
business, if you have customers to serve, and if time is money, then failures
(e.g. breaking something) could be dealt with more sensibly - no
inquisition/detention, just don`t do it again and everyone is happy.

Meanwhile...

Amongst my clique of school friends, nobody else got the work thing. They had
pocket money and school dinner money instead of their own earnings. They also
had parents that helped them along to posh universities (or art schools) and
quiet, warm places to study. If they wanted a bicycle then one would appear
for them if they behaved. To them money was something you held onto, it wasn`t
something you just walked out the door to get. They had a limited reservoir of
money not a flowing river of the stuff. They would also have exciting
activities in the after school hours - swimming, piano lessons, you know the
drill - none of these things they personally had to pay for, the parents did.
Consequently they could be assertive to get what they wanted - they developed
a sense of entitlement for things whereas I went the other way - servitude to
others!!! That was how I got my praise, building customer/client/employer
relationships and school. I always felt that any praise that did come from
school was lip-service and utterly worthless. On the flipside I knew that I
could always get work and didn`t have to be beholden to any employer. I still
see this aspect today as a programmer. If I have a bad day I could just pick
up the phone and be somewhere else next Monday, no references or interview
needed. My regular office colleagues don`t have this, moving up the hierarchy
by doing as they are told is how it works.

I don`t see small children with 25Kgs of newspapers on their backs at the
crack of dawn or small children pushing heavy lawnmowers or serving people in
shops. The world has moved on from that possibility.

However I do see people who want to win the lottery, be a pop star or a
footballer. I also see a lot of young people getting validation through
Facebook likes from their peers. None of these things are real... It is only
in the area of software development that kids can actually do something to get
praise denied by parents and teachers. So, if you are 14 and reading this,
that is my advice - write code, get happy customers and get some real world
praise.

~~~
toomanybeersies
I think I was one of the first of my peers to get a job at 15. It's not that
my parents didn't pay for things for me, just that they had their ideas of
what they wanted me to do, and my ideas of what I wanted to do were different.

I haven't been unemployed for a significant time since, I've been out of work
2 months now (I start my new job in a week) and it's driven me up the wall.

Most people I knew in high school never had a job, and I knew a few people at
university who managed to go through their entire degree without a job as
well. These people have never worked a day in their life, they're going to
have massive issues when it comes to actually finding a career. I'd never hire
someone who's 20-something with no job experience.

Upon saying that, along the way I've picked up an attitude of work harder, not
smarter, which I've been struggling to reverse. I worked for half a decade in
kitchens, where that was the prevailing attitude, nobody would spend 5 minutes
to save them 20 minutes. Chefs aren't known for being intellectuals and good
managers.

------
soufron
He is also fucking lucky... Which helps ! Winning the startup lottery does not
equal being a life role model. I would not generalize on such people.

~~~
skadamat
Ha you should watch Thiels talk at SXSW on luck, just to get the whole picture
/ his context.

~~~
nibs
^^^ Source:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZM_JmZdqCw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZM_JmZdqCw)

------
soufron
This is utter bullshit. Let the fucking kid enjoy some self-esteem. Focusing
on improving his "motivation" instead of his well-being is manipulative and
can backfire in so many ways. Just let him be. Fuck the productivity way of
life.

~~~
speeder
When I was constantly praised for being intelligent, but criticized for my
real failings, I didn't got high self-steem. I got instead self hate, and
extreme amounts of Hubris, of the sort that I believed myself so intelligent
that I could tell a very high ranked government official that she was dumb,
without consequences. (I was 15 during that incident, caused some crazy mess)

~~~
metaphorm
well, was the government official really dumb though?

the lesson is "don't piss of people with power over you that are willing to
use it". that's a tough lesson to learn and is practical advice for survival
in this world. there is value in truth though. learning better strategies for
telling the truth is very valuable.

------
soufron
So what? If they're smart they dont need to work anyway...

~~~
speeder
I was "the" smart kid in my social circle. People that knew mr as a kid still
ask me opinion on random stuff because they remember that.

But my adult life (I am 28 now) went nowhere precisely for this reason.

As a kid, I could literally skip all classes and homework, then figure the
subject "on the spot" during tests, and score high enough to still pass.

This doesn't work as adult, but I don't know how to do it right now...

~~~
duderific
Me too. I cruised through all the way up through high school. When I got to
college (UC Berkeley), the first paper I wrote, I got a D minus. Boy was that
a wake up call. I had to learn to work a lot harder because the level of
competition was so much higher.

