The great self-esteem con

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/03/quasi-religious-great-self-esteem-con

by oska • 9 years ago

210 194 9 years ago

Animats• 9 years ago

"I like having low self-esteem. It makes me feel special." - Jane Lane, in Daria, after being sent to self-esteem class in high school.

Bartweiss7• 9 years ago

I sort of feel like Daria should be required watching for any adult with a "genius new idea" for improving education and child-raising. If your clever new scheme wouldn't work at Lawndale, it's not going to work in the real world either.

crawfordcomeaux19• 9 years ago

Haven't finished the article yet, but I already see several red flags as to where they got things wrong:

1. Self-esteem is a byproduct of self-compassion, not external awards or compliments. External stuff produces other-esteem and yeah, it's the root of narcissism

2. They tried to produce self-esteem through removing any chance of suffering. Teaching people how to respond to suffering would've been much more productive.

3. Describing someone to themselves can be unintentionally harmful when judgment or comparison is used, whether it be positive or negative. This article shows how positive judgments (ie. compliments/praise) can be harmful.

If anyone's interested in a functional alternative, I highly recommend the book "Nonviolent Communication."

strictfp6• 9 years ago

I'm not so sure I buy into that theory of yours any more than the article.

My personal theory is that self-esteem arises from the fact that you are aware of your acceptance in a social group. Knowing that you are welcome calms you and gives that assertive vibe.

I don't think it matters how much you believe in yourself. At least not beyond a basic level. In fact, believing too much in a non-conforming self makes you a narcissist, and believing too much in a conforming self makes you vain.

csydas• 9 years ago

I would agree with this, and also that the 'damage' caused by "Everyone gets a trophy" is overstated immensely. My experience having coached children's basketball was that the consolation and participation prizes did little to nothing to console the children when they lost. Even if they got a ribbon or a tiny participation trophy, it didn't change their sour mood over losing unless the children genuinely weren't that interested in the competition to begin with, in which case I don't really think there's a problem in not being that invested in a competition.

Undeserved praise and adoration does have negative side effects, and it likely isn't the healthiest way to raise children, but the over-emphasis on celebrating participation isn't the society ruining factor people make it out to be. At worst it's probably just a waste of resources and effort.

On the other-hand, parents over-stressing and vicariously experiencing competition through their children is a very real problem, and the behavior of some of the adults I would see at gradeschool basketball games was just shocking, especially given that it was low division schools, so mostly just after-school sports. (i.e., there was no professional path here or proper competition for any child looking to take a chance at professional play someday - it was a bunch of 8 year olds running around the court, most of which couldn't even throw the ball high enough to reach the rim of the lowered basket). To see parents yelling and screaming at their kids to shove and hurt other children in order to win was just ridiculous.

sametmax3• 9 years ago

I don't think it matters how much you believe in yourself

That's not what OP said. Quote:

Self-esteem is a byproduct of self-compassion

Self-compassion is not believing in yourself, it's accepting yourself as-is. And not just accepting in the sense of "settling for it". But having the same respect and nice feeling about you that you have about the others your like.

While outside validation helps a lot in one to avoid rejecting oneself, it just removes a (huge) barrier for building self-esteem. Self-esteem can't come from outside.

The problem with other people validating you is that as soon as you loose it, you loose what you though was self-esteem. And you get angry, you blame, you can't find solutions, and you ever give you all the responsibilities or remove yourself from all of them.

If you succeed and get praise, it then inflate your ego and narcissism.

But once you build self-compassion, even when you screw up, you still like yourself. But you can still see your fair part of responsibility in all this. And when your succeed, liking yourself as you are, you know what's really you, and what's really coming from outside help and luck. And you don't inflate your ego.

rosser• 9 years ago

Is it really self-esteem if it's contingent upon acceptance within the social group?

JustFYI• 9 years ago

The point wasn't to create any actual positive effect on the people. The point was to make them focus on life-long internal competition and quest for glory. They succeeded tremendously.

_Codemonkeyism• 9 years ago

Did not finish ... article ... but must ... write HN comment ...

crawfordcomeaux19• 9 years ago

And yet...wrote...pertinent thoughts...not in article...but how...

mowenz• 9 years ago

Perhaps people get self-esteem from different sources?

Personally I think people conflafe self-esteem with confidence. The article and the subject of it are doing this, and I'm a bit surprised it's not mentioned.

"Unconditional positivity" will probably build confidence--faith in positive outcomes--but it doesn't appear to build self-esteem--high value or love for oneself.

And someone can be completely unconfident and have very high self-esteem...

But who knows: perhaps artificially-induced confidence can at least trick people into feeling like they love themselves. If it does, then good for them?

Personally I could see myself end up thinking, worrying and beating myself up about being fake or phony, but that's just me. I might say it's not for me, but I would try not tell them directly with a Dwight-from-The-Office demeanor: "Wrong. Self-esteem comes from..."

crawfordcomeaux19• 9 years ago

Not only do they get it from different sources, but how they get it from those sources can be wildly different. There seem to be multiple definitions of self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-worth floating around online, so I won't address them specifically. I'd say they all generally deal with finding meaning in one's self & the world. And finding meaning is a deeply personal thing.

For example, I discover new meaning in my experiences by projecting their content/context into songs I'm listening to.

My take on tricking myself into something: if learning to love myself requires some level of confidence, temporarily inducing said confidence, can be helpful when combined with a practice for learning how to love myself. The trick is doing it with intention and then weaning off the confidence booster.

I already do this in various ways therapeutically. I was thinking about the second conscious voice in my head I accidentally created through my experiments & wondering if it's truly a second personality or if I'm simply playing pretend & naively fooling myself. Then I realized it doesn't matter because it's something helping me & as long as it's done in a transparent, authentic manner, nobody else has to care which it is, either.

vog• 9 years ago

External stuff produces other-esteem and yeah, it's the root of narcissism

Don't confuse root and symptoms, though. Excessive admiration contributes as much as exaggerated criticism throughout the childhood. If anything, the narcissistic personality disorder means a missing intrinsic self-esteem, which is tried to compensate by getting this from external sources - which somewhat "works", but not for long, so it must be repeated again and again.

crawfordcomeaux19• 9 years ago

Agreed. To clarify, I think it's a potential root of narcissism. I suspect there are multiple paths to NPD with other-esteem emerging as a symptom in some & a root in others.

dghf• 9 years ago

#2 sounds very much like Stoicism, as to some extent does #1.

crawfordcomeaux19• 9 years ago

Classical Stoicism (and not the "be an emotionless robot" nonsense it's often misinterpreted as) is very much like Buddhism & Nonviolent Communication.

icc974• 9 years ago

Self-esteem is a byproduct of self-compassion

There was a HN article on that recently [0]

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/05/why-self-...

suneilp• 9 years ago

Teach people how to respond not just to suffering, but negative self-criticism and though patterns. Recognizing negative thought patterns is a bit difficult though, from personal experience. It's quite subjective and can be very personal.

usmeteora4• 9 years ago

I agree.

The immediate conflation that positive self regaurd = caccooning growing adults form their consequences was a good thing to lump together and assume the readers would accept.

You can have positive self regard for kids and let them make their own decisions, experience mistakes and struggle to some degree to find their way out.

The idea that they need your negative judgment on top of the consequences life will hand them for their actions anyways is the logical flaw and conflation here.

woodandsteel• 9 years ago

Nonviolent Communication is a wonderful book.

msolujic• 9 years ago

Another great book on subject: "Nurture shock"

clumsysmurf• 9 years ago

Another article in The Atlantic was published recently, mentioning John Vasconcellos. Kristin Neff thinks self-compassion works better.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/05/why-self-...

Neff also has a book https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004JN1DBO

WalterGR• 9 years ago

That article was posted here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314958

428 points | 25 days ago | 148 comments

cbanek• 9 years ago

Penn & Teller did a great episode of this on bullshit. Season 8, Episode 9.

underwater4• 9 years ago

At Barrowford, people learned, teachers were discouraged from issuing punishments, defining a child as “naughty” and raising their voices.

Tell a person that they're stupid every day and then ask them to apply themselves. They're not even going to try. Now call a kid naughty and then ask them to behave themselves.

ptaipale3• 9 years ago

Tell them they're naughy when they behave naughtily, tell them they're nice when they behave nicely.

That sounds like a solid plan to me, and there's no reason to see why it would then be a problem to ask them to behave themselves.

watwut8• 9 years ago

A kid that believes that he is inherently naughty wont even try nor has reason to try to behave itself. It is not even actionable command. Especially when it comes to little ones, telling them what they should do and then insisting on it work waaay better then any amount of hurting them (whether physically or when you try to make them feel bad).

The fact is, the spoiled generation has really lower criminality rates, violence rates, takes less drugs then supposedly better behaved predecessors. People love to compare worst students now with best students of their generation or with their idealized idea of how great they themselves were - ignoring huge amount of people who dropped out of the school knowing pretty much nothing and that was it. Meanwhile, current best students are actually pretty good.

It is not all down to parenting changes only, but given better objective results the nostalgia for good old times is not really fact based.

anonnyj• 9 years ago

Careful with "you are naughty" vs "you are being naughty", and the like.

underwater4• 9 years ago

Kids are still trying to figure out their self-identity. Having them believe that they are naughty is not a good thing, as it will create a feedback loop.

They rule I've always used is to blame the behaviour (you're doing a naughty thing) if it's negative and praise the child (you're so kind) if it's something you want to reinforce.

pipio21• 9 years ago

That sounds like a very weak plan to me.

If someone does not behaves like you expect him to you should tell just that, but adding a label to it(insult) is extremely dangerous.

The reason is because there is something called the ego, that are the beliefs that someone has about herself. Those beliefs get ingrained by repetition memory like artificial learning.

English have a problem in the language not differentiating between being in a temporary state and being forever. In Spanish for example you differentiate between being temporary(estar) and being forever(ser).

In other words whether you tell a kid that she is temporary fat(está gorda) or that she is fat forever(es gorda) makes an enormous difference and impression on her mind. If you repeat so much that she is fat(forever) she will start to identify herself as a fat kid forever and whatever she does.

This is behind so many problems in adults.

scintill76• 9 years ago

I believe the quote is saying the teachers were not permitted to call kids naughty, for the same reason you describe. Confusion caused by missing Oxford comma?

underwater4• 9 years ago

I was agreeing with the quoted statement, but the article was using it as a "we wrap kids in cotton wool" argument. I didn't make that clear in my post.

bambax2• 9 years ago

One manifestation of this has been grade inflation

Pet peeve: there is no such thing as grade inflation because there is no grade after (or before) A.

What we're witnessing is much worse, it's grade compression where all grades move up with a hard limit.

Inflation wouldn't matter a lot, it would simply make comparisons between periods of time more difficult (we would need to "adjust for inflation").

Compression is much worse because it destroys information, namely, the difference between good and bad works in the same class.

If we had "price compression" in real life, society wouldn't be able to function (everything would cost the same).

Noseshine• 9 years ago

EDIT: Oh I get it. Should have responded AFTER the morning espresso.

Sean1708• 9 years ago

I think GP is saying that it's precisely because grades are limited to a handful of values that you get grade compression instead of grade inflation, and that if prices were limited to some upper value you would get price compression which would be bad.

watwut8• 9 years ago

Should grades reflect absolute knowledge (e.g. if you have this grade then you are that good) or should they reflect relative ordering? With increasing competition, the relative difference of the top should become smaller. That is one factor.

Grades inflation happens because grades and having finished the school once you started now matter more to students then they used to. The techniques they often use (negotiation) are not exactly commendable, but it still had more to do with price and benefits of it then self-esteem and trophies when they were four years. old.

kqr3• 9 years ago

Should grades reflect absolute knowledge (e.g. if you have this grade then you are that good) or should they reflect relative ordering?

This is a can of worms all by itself, too. Grades can reflect

1) Absolute knowledge, but this unfairly favours students from rich and well-educated parents; 2) Relative superiority compared to your age group, but this encourages children to not help each other because they are afraid they're competing for a limited number of higher grades; 3) Speed of development, which is largely determined by genetics at any given age; 4) Effort, which is unfair to the bright students who have nothing to put their effort in to; or 5) Potential future ability, which is nigh impossible to measure and not necessarily even an important marker of anything.

There are many more options, and neither is obviously right. I don't think any of these really help with the issue mentioned in the article.

joncrocks• 9 years ago

FWIW, in the UK, you can get A*s (A 'star').

We've had these for GCSEs (typically sat at around 16 years old) for ages, and they were introduced into A-Level in 2010.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCE_Advanced_Level_(United_Kin...

m-i-l• 9 years ago

A "grade 9" was also introduced in 2017, and that is higher than an A* [0], so some people refer to that as A* * (A star star) [1].

[0] https://ofqual.blog.gov.uk/2017/04/05/setting-grade-9-in-new...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/education/shortcuts/2014/sep/14/...

Steve44• 9 years ago

There is a big difference in the grades students are getting in the UK. I don't have an answer as to why but here are some examples for A level Chemistry. The links below give the tables with GCSE and A level exam results from 1993 to 2016.

In 1993 16.8% got an A and 10.3% a U

by 2016 8.4% were A* and 23.5% got an A (31.9% at A/A*) with only 2.7% getting a U.

http://www.bstubbs.co.uk/a-lev.htm

http://www.bstubbs.co.uk/gcse.htm

Clubber2• 9 years ago

Talking to old timers when I was young (I'm getting to be an old timer), they were all graded on a bell curve in college:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grading_on_a_curve

That sounds great when the tests are hard, but when they're easy, if you got a B and you had the lowest B, it would turn into an F. Of course, the worse students (relatively) would flunk out of school. If you were in a batch of really bright students and you were one of them, that would suck.

When I went to college, I remember professors only applying the curve when everyone did poorly on the exam.

For what it's worth, my wife recently completed her college degree and it was about the same in difficulty as mine 20+ years ago.

shubhamjain• 9 years ago

It shows an interesting conundrum. Tell kids—and even people—that their work is awesome and they won't strive; tell them the harsh truth and they won't try again. Bulk of my personal history consists of falling in the latter. I hated being mediocre, and in my school life, I barely tried anything; when I did, it only took a brief while to understand that I am not up for it.

What's the solution? It's not as easy as educating students about growth mindset or long-term rewards of failure. They wouldn't absorb it the way you intended. Most failures don't necessarily motivate to improve. In fact, I think they result in people dropping out. It takes a long series of failures before you accept it as a part of the process.

I have read many theories surrounding how we can make our kids strive, make them resilient, and compassionate. So far, none of them have sounded convincing. There are probably many hidden factors involved and I guess it mostly boils down to: environment and luck.

3pt14159• 9 years ago

You don't need to laud the outcome, you need to laud the inner part of the child that is striving to be better and that enjoys the process of doing the thing for its own sake. They need to know where they are, but discouragement is more of a sign that they're not enjoying the activity. When someone really enjoys something they like finding the flaws in what they're doing so they can get better.

I was far more discouraged learning French than Russian and Russian isn't exactly easier than French. The difference was that I was being forced to learn French against my (at the time) wishes. I just wanted to do math and play with computers - things that didn't discourage me.

Viewed from this angle the task of guiding children is different: How do we get them to enjoy the things we need them to learn?

I don't have an answer to that, but maybe its ok. Maybe children also need to learn that sometimes they need to muddle through something they hate, and maybe one day they'll change their mind about it.

kqr3• 9 years ago

discouragement is more of a sign that they're not enjoying the activity. When someone really enjoys something they like finding the flaws in what they're doing so they can get better.

Are you sure this correlation is unidirectional? As a tutor, I frequently get people to enjoy things they didn't before simply by trying really hard to avoid discouraging feelings. In a way, a large portion of my tutoring is about getting people to enjoy the things they used to hate, because that appears to massively improve retention rate.

There's some more here if you're interested in how you get people to enjoy stuff: http://jorendorff.github.io/hackday/2013/tutoring/

throwanem• 9 years ago

children also need to learn that sometimes they need to muddle through something they hate

Yes. Otherwise experience will do so, and not likely in a fashion that's pleasant or kind.

animal531• 9 years ago

I've read that West vs East functions a bit differently. In the West we like to talk about the outcome, whereas in the East they focus more on the effort, which sort of ties into what you're saying.

mcv2• 9 years ago

I always learned that you should praise kids for what they do, not for what they are. So don't tell them they're smart, tell them they solved a problem well. You don't have to be the best at everything, but you should try to improve. It's not about where you rank on the list of best students ever, it's about what you do, what you accomplish. Don't compare to others, compare to yourself: is this better than before? If so, awesome! You got better at something!

kerrsclyde• 9 years ago

Good leaders use both, sometimes the carrot sometimes the stick. A combination of praise and discipline to draw out the best results in someone. My best teacher at high school was liberal with his praise but if you slacked off you'd soon know about it.

Nexialist• 9 years ago

For myself, I would think that the best way to compel kids (and adults) to be more interested in learning and personal development is to relate it to their sense of identity.

People want to emulate their heroes and live into who they feel they are. The 'school nerd' phenomenon is one we're probably most familiar with; if you start seeing your identity as being a 'nerd' of the school, you tend to live into it even more. If you can somehow leverage that effect, it can be fairly powerful.

And then of course, just making learning fun, entertaining and a normal part of life and not just for school would certainly help. I read recreationally very early on because that was just normal in my home environment.

Overall, I'd worry less about making students feel good or bad over individual tasks, and pay more attention to fostering their desire to be the kind of person that needs to learn.

blablabla123• 9 years ago

I very much agree on what you say. In fact I'd been in similar situation. So having thought about this a lot too, I'm thinking more and more often that it might make sense to do things even if it's "just" going to be mediocre. We don't have to strive on everything. Although eventually some things might go really well because one is truly interested in them.

Rewards can help but maybe it's sometimes better to reward oneself, e.g. by spending a lot of money on a breakfast after accomplishing something. But yeah, when you're in school, you very much depend on your parents.

icc974• 9 years ago

There's a relevant TED talk about this on teaching 'grit' [0] (a mix of passion and perseverance).

I find her arguments quite convincing.

And I think like a lot of learning and any pathways in the brain - this is something you can practice with children, always trying to push them a bit further and making the pathways stronger.

[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_powe...

jostylr• 9 years ago

Read up on Sudbury schools. The trick is to treat kids like real human beings. Don't tell them what to do beyond what is needed to form a functioning community and environment. Let them figure themselves out. Let them succeed and fail, be jerks (within limits that respect other's need for safety and support) and be angels, all under their own power. Don't worry about academic achievements as that stuff comes really easy once a person masters being a human.

helly• 9 years ago

I find the topic of self-esteem super interesting.

Somehow it seems to be one of the most fundamental factors of our well being and the course of our life. Yet we usually don't even try to measure it. Do I have below or above average self-esteem? I couldn't say.

Googling around brought up the "Rosenberg self-esteem scale" questionnaire. I tried it. Scored is 14. Which is considered low. Uh oh :)

Now what?

ageofwant• 9 years ago

Well, you know, just be yourself, unless of course your are shit...

Also, do keep in mind that there are a lot of losers out there. Changes are your are a loser.

See, this is a silly road to take.

nstj• 9 years ago

To answer that, you have to go back to 1986 and the work of an eccentric and powerful California politician, John “Vasco” Vasconcellos

Funny that they don't really describe who he was or his political position (state senator).

I find it hard to believe that 1 CA state senator is responsible for a syndrome experienced in the U.K.

SeanDav• 9 years ago

What needs to be encouraged is genuine improvement. I think the child that came 14th should get recognition, if last time she came 33rd in the same field.

In addition, top performers should always be encouraged. Relative to their peers, they have achieved as much as they can, and that should be recognized and lauded as well.

eludwig• 9 years ago

Some comments after reading the article and the thread as it stands.

My kids are in their early thirties now and grew up right in the middle of the "self-esteem" boom. We jokingly called the grade school they attended "self-esteem central" and this was back in the late 80s, so we (as parents) were very aware of what was happening at the time.

I think we knew even then that not everything about it felt quite right. My feeling around the absurdity of the 35 trophies for "trying real hard" at the time was that it diminished the very real accomplishment that actually winning something (for real) entailed. AND, the kids were never fooled. They knew exactly who had really won (as others in the thread have mentioned). So like all of these "reactionary" movements (as defined by a sharp deviation from what came before) they tend to pull too far in the other direction.

Most important for me though is the feeling that the movement had the basic idea perfectly right! I think it is hard for non-parents to understand the feeling of helplessness that a parent feels when they send their kids into the mad hopper of public school. You have raised and loved this little being for 5 or so years and now you are sending them to a place where you can mostly only hope that they will not be treated poorly (berated, insulted, hurt physically). So if the self-esteem movement did anything, maybe it raised the bar for the reasonable treatment of kids as fallible human beings that respond better to the carrot than the stick? I think it feels right to me. As parents we are just looking for a safe place for our children to learn stuff. Is it so much to ask that this place actually not suck?

As far as raising children with an eye towards "global competition," the argument can be made that there are diabolical ways involving mind-games, insults and cajoling that will breed more cutthroat competitors and that the adults raised this way are better equipped for the "real world". I say have at it. Parents can make that choice too if they want to. But I didn't want that for my kids, period. Make the "real world" the place you want it to be.

lr4444lr2• 9 years ago

The devil does not deserve even the due you're giving it. Imposing a dysfunctional self-concept on children to satisfy the parents' anxiety is at best morally dubious in and of itself, but more importantly, praise that is relentlessly unconditional and unearned ignores everything researchers have found in operant conditioning concerning satiation, schedule, individualization, and zone of proximal development.

tcfunk• 9 years ago

All of which are points I carefully take into consideration before saying "Good job!"

ky3• 9 years ago

So many devils, so little time.

"Operant conditioning"?

For whom and for what purposes are our kids to be satiated, scheduled, individualized, and zoned?

Bartweiss7• 9 years ago

Imposing a dysfunctional self-concept on children to satisfy the parents' anxiety is at best morally dubious in and of itself

When I played rec sports as a kid, we weren't allowed to keep score because it might lead to bad feelings and competitiveness. Not just when we were too young to do it right, but up to around age 15. Everyone involved did keep score of course, we'd all signed up for a competitive sport outside of school. (Or been pushed in by parents, who nevertheless didn't want scorekeeping...) But anyone overheard mentioning the score got an angry lecture, so we had to do it when there were no (adult) witnesses.

It didn't take long at all for kids to notice that we were 'protecting' the adults instead of the reverse. Score was still kept, kids were still being bullied to tears over losses, nothing had changed, but the rule worked perfectly at making sure parents and coaches didn't see it happen.

I don't think participation ribbons hurt kids, because they have so little impact. At worst, aimless positivity is just a wasted opportunity for something better. But the more controlling side of self-esteem building is creepy and terrible - it has a horrible emphasis on changing kid's lives to allay their parents fears, no matter how unreasonable.

50CNT• 9 years ago

I think trophies for trying shows that the self-esteem movement didn't go far enough.

Take a company with a completely and utterly broken sales process. Landing page copy is abjectly horrible, half the orders get dropped, no tracking or analytics, and one hand doesn't know what the other one is doing. Now fixing that entire system is a hard job, but a valuable one. So what do we do? We give people coupons. That's easy.

Now take the "self-esteem movement". The basic idea was that it'd be valuable to give people a sense of trust in their own abilities, acknowledge them as intrinsically valuable, and have them learn to appreciate their own accomplishments, because that better prepares them for any of the challenges that life may offer. But to put that to work up and down the stack is a hard problem. So we hand out coupons. That's easy.

And in that we accomplish the opposite from what we set out to do. Instead of feeling acknowledged, children feel conned. Instead of making them feel valued for what they are, we make them feel interchangeable. Instead of helping children celebrate their achievement we undermine the concept of achievement in their minds by treating it as "eh, you've tried".

le-mark• 9 years ago

I agree with this assessment. People who are vitriolically opposed to 'participation trophies' miss something very basic in my opinion, and that is, participation is optional. Meaning, you have to show up to get the trophy.

This is a subtle distinction I didn't get until raising my own kids. Maybe this is obvious to others, but it was a real "aha" moment to me. To get your kids to act the way you want, you can't just focus on the negative all the time, you have to let them know when they're doing things right. If you just wait for them to screw up then yell at them, you end up doing a lot of yelling, and they're behavior sucks. But when they're sitting at the table eating their dinner, using their fork like they're supposed to, a comment that hey, you're doing a great job right now! really goes a long way in communicating what your expectations are of them.

Before I had kids, if I'd heard this, I would think those parents are pandering and dumb. But it really does work.

mjevans• 9 years ago

Then don't lie about what you're praising, make it clear and focused on the actual positive.

If you're going to have a ribbon or something, make sure that it's for seeing the task through, for "being there". Not something to try to artificially rival or nearly match 'being the best'.

crpatino• 9 years ago

The thing that makes that one praise at the table meaningful at all is the fact that there had been dozens of times the kids behaved just as well, or mostly as well, but the parents choose to not make a big deal about it.

The same argument works for negative reinforcement as well. The most convincing argument I have heard about avoiding harsh rising of children has nothing to do with the intrinsic rights o kids. Instead, it points out that one day, not that far away, you may find your teenager consuming drugs, or engaged in unprotected sexual intercourse, or commiting petty crime; and if by then you have not left yourself enough room to escalate short of corporal punishment (or not even that) then you might find yourself in a fight that you cannot win a hormone loaded young person that never learned to respect you and surely won't start today.

So, I think this has a lot to do with signal to noise ratio. Whether you praise or you demean, the point is to make it rare enough to be noticed when it happens. I did not always do it that way, but I have got better results when I began following that advice.

IsNullAValue• 9 years ago

I think this applies to all levels of life and career. As a millennial working for a boss that knows only the stick and never ever picks the carrot, I wish you could give him some advice. I can do everything right for 6-12 months and never hear from him...then make one mistake and here comes HR with threats of termination.

dkarl• 9 years ago

the kids were never fooled. They knew exactly who had really won

Yep, all that positive reinforcement only taught us not to trust praise. At least, that was my response. Praise just reinforced how I already felt about myself. If I felt I was doing well, praise felt like confirmation, and it felt great. If I didn't feel I had done something to deserve it, praise felt awful, like I had been called out as being especially pathetic.

My knee-jerk reaction to an unexpected compliment is still to feel humiliated and angry. I've learned to think twice and sometimes realize, yeah, I did handle that well, or yeah, this is a nice outfit, but I still have that instant of feeling attacked before I control my reaction.

I think that's a lesson to learn: you can't erase the difference between success and failure. If you try, you just end up confusing them. A kid who hears praise every time he fucks up learns to associate praise with failure and learns there's no way to deal with failure except to pretend it didn't happen.

logfromblammo• 9 years ago

I am also uncomfortable with compliments. About the only praise I can stand now comes with a bonus check attached, because that confirms the [additional] value that person placed on my effort. Even if you're faking that enthusiasm, I still get to spend the money.

Otherwise, if you valued my performance at the cost of printing up a certificate on paper that is slightly heavier and more cream-colored than normal copy paper, and with an injection-molded bit of plastic that has an engraved plaque glued to it, I would feel about $25 worth of honored.

That crap works on my father, though. He likes everyone to know how great and interesting he is.

For me, nothing is worse than getting a compliment when I don't think I deserve one, and if I already think I deserve one, I don't actually need to get any, because I'm already feeling great.

Evolved3• 9 years ago

I agree and furthermore I think that excessive praise even when someone is just doing what's expected of them can be harmful.

Anecdotal: My boss used to go around praising people in general for just doing their jobs. I was even on the receiving end of so many "have I told you how awesome you are" or "I hope you realize how valuable you are to the operation" canned responses that, although it was nice to hear, it lost its luster eventually. I ended up replying every time he'd do this with a motion of opening a beer can accompanied with a verbal "psshtt" sound and adding in a "thanks for the can of praise." It was meant in jest and he took it in stride and understood it wasn't meant with any malice. I was just poking a little fun at the observations he was making.

The point is, when you do it to too many people, too often, and for doing nothing but what's expected of them, it starts to ring hollow eventually.

Anecdotal: I observed something about myself which I found peculiar. A friend of a friend on Facebook, whom I observe to have quite intelligent DH4+ responses to comments even if the masses usually come back with a DH0 or DH1 response. I found myself observing his responses to other folks' comments and throwing in my own $.02. I discovered that the quality of my responses was greatly elevated when replying to him, clearly attempting to engage him at his level. This was sometimes rewarded with a 'like' from him, and sometimes not. When receiving a 'like' it resulted in a physiological response from me akin to a very light drug high.

ThrustVectoring• 9 years ago

I'm simply not having children unless I have a reasonable plan for alternatives to age-segregated schooling. The entire system is deeply, fundamentally flawed, and definitively not in the best interest of the child.

photojosh4• 9 years ago

I'd be fascinated to see another system that could work at scale. Nor has there been a historical system that was better AFAICT.

I do have a few friends who home-school, and that's great if a parent can dedicate a significant amount of time to that.

I do applaud your stance. The chance for me to even consider it is long gone. :)

saltedmd5• 9 years ago

A little more than a year later, Barrowford found itself in the news again. Ofsted had given the school one of its lowest possible ratings, finding the quality of teaching and exam results inadequate. The school, their report said, “emphasised developing pupils’ emotional and social wellbeing more than the attainment of high standards”. Somehow, it seemed, the nurturing of self-esteem had not translated into higher achievement.

Maybe Ofsted is measuring the wrong things.

arximboldi• 9 years ago

I think that blaming current narcissistic trends on this guy is extremely naive: as so many others point out these are pervasive all over the western world. And it ignores more fundamental changes, like the growth of private mass media which is now ubiquitous, the permeation of the advertising language into our daily lives, the take-over of the Internet by corporations that profit precisely from our individualization, and other consequences of a decades long ideological war on any form of collectivist thought.

J-dawg8• 9 years ago

This is a very good point. The author is promoting his book about self-obsession, but conflating self-obsession with self-esteem seems wrong. They are surely linked, but are different things.

In fact, people with low self-esteem are more likely to appear self-obsessed because they need validation and reassurance from other people. They literally spend more time in their own heads, worrying about what others think of them.

If you have a solid core of self-belief, you're less likely to care about others' judgement of you.

zby• 9 years ago

Another hypothesis - kids now are overstimulated, their brains are saturated with new stuff, but have not time to process it deeply. The deep processes are mostly activated when there is nothing new to register - i.e. mostly when the child is a bit bored. When there is new interesting stuff the brain is preoccupied by registering it and have no time for any deep reflection.

This is not much different from our problems with too much food.

icc974• 9 years ago

It is worth mentioning that the school in the article, Barrowford primary school in the UK, was given a 'Good' (2 on a scale of 1-4) Ofsted report [0] in 2012, then in 2015 (just after the 'heartwarming letter' went viral) this dropped to Inadequate (4) and the most recent report in 2016 had them back up at 'Good'.

It's also worth noting that in the 2015 'Inadequate' report, they specify that:

Standards are improving and are getting closer to those attained nationally by seven- and 11-year-olds as a result of some well-targeted small group teaching, particularly of disadvantaged pupils.

So standards had improved, but they felt the need to lower the report from 'Good' to 'Inadequate'.

It's almost like the Ofsted were punishing them for getting famous.

[0] https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find-inspec...

tragic• 9 years ago

I wonder how many times the goalposts were arbitrarily moved in that time. I don't doubt that the 'self-esteem' movement is bunkum, but holding up the results of Ofsted inspections as 'The Truth' which shows it to be so is laughable to anyone who's ever met a teacher in this country.

sideshowb• 9 years ago

Anecdotally I have heard of schools failing Ofsted for allegedly political reasons (ie they are still comprehensives and not on the government's preferred "academy" funding model; an assessment fail can force their hand at getting in line). I would take ofsted ratings for any comp with a pinch of salt.

usmeteora4• 9 years ago

Meh

1. "prioritising their feelings of self-worth, telling them they are special and amazing, and cocooning them from everyday consequences."

This annoys me, when people throw in an entirely new assumption at the end of a sentence "...cocooning them from everyday consequences"

You can entirely regaurd growing adults with positive self regard AND let them experience the consequences of their actions.

The worriesome part about this is the conflation that consequences = lack of positive self regaurd to the growing adult.

If you truly uncaccoon growing adults from consequences and let them experience the results of their mistakes, they don't need your lecture of negative judgment on top of it, life will be there to teach them, and you can positively regard them as humans that make mistakes, and by not caccooning them expect them to solve the problems.

I mean honestly, the parents who believe their kids need a lecture about every mistake they make and judgment are the ones who are known as helicoptor parents and actually those kids end up being the least capable of being their own advocates because their parents never back off and allow them to make their own mistakes and struggle to find their way out.

This is why the Standford admissions office did an article on this, supposed Helicoptor parenting which was basically Stanford having problems with all these kids with 4.9 GPAs, 87 AP exams, science fair admissions with PhD level work put into them, who were held to hardcore high standards all work no play no emotion work work work your life = your GPA and the school you get into, and saying these kids literally could not solve the simplest everyday life problems and their parents called the school everyday trying to micromanage them or argue with Professors if their kids got less than B+s on exams

Its also why after the Gunn highschool suicide incident, highschool kids posted online to the parents to "back off" and quit pushing their kids so hard.

It's hard for me to take the rest of the article seriously, but I read on...

This is to show the other extreme and REAL effect of the opposite of show no compassion, only regard growing adults based on their accomplishments relative to everyone else.

If you take this attitude in life youre not helping your kid grow, you suffocating them, and debilitating their own sense of life navigation. This isn't about them, its about YOU imposing your self worth and narcissism and identify and your own self worth on how far along you can get your kid in life, and you need to back off.

I've witnessed this first hand going to university, and was really disturbed by helicopter parents versus my upbringing which was not helicopter parenting at all. Never seen kids more miserable in their life. I'm not even sure it was their life, they were walking poster children for their parents to show society look what I can do. Very few times did I see the kids who grew up like this get to make any of their own decisions. Very sad.

2. Grade inflation IS NOT there to boost self esteem, its there to allow elite institutions to maintain elitism by getting ivy kids good jobs and preparing them well for exams.

2/3s of all grades made at Brown University are As. It's there so everyone can get good jobs at high end consulting firms if they choose to instead of using their Political Science degree for some less profitable career path where the need is great, and grades/competition/elite ivy names matter less.

GPA grade inflation is about highschools gaining and maintaining status to justify private school tuition, and college does the same equivalent but has the double incentive of increasing competition to admissions for more room to choose the cream of the crop, and increasing the dowry back to the school from happy and financially successful alumni.

Both appeals to the idea that

a. negative judgment from their parents or teachers is the only way to allow growing adults to experience consequences of their actions

b. grade inflation is for the self esteem boost of individuals.

are false and the rest of this article rides on these astounding assumptions the author assumes you will buy into

*Note: I do understand the everyone is a winner, and clapping for every extracurricular club your kid joins, and treating them like little geniuses who Harvard would be at a loss of not having because youve decided thats the case for your baby since he showed his genius capabilities by bring two months early on the growth scale for expected timeline for piecing legos together, and ever since youve just been doing your job by providing the best past of growth for your little genius...yeh yeh yeh I know that happens

but that has nothing to do with needing negative judgment to grow, or the motivation behind grade inflation, which is strictly for the long term financial benefit of the institutions providing it.

J-dawg8• 9 years ago

Related question: does anyone have personal experience of significantly improving their self-esteem as an adult? Or is your level of self-esteem pretty much fixed as a child and something that needs to be "managed" in adulthood rather than changed?

molsongolden• 9 years ago

No data to support this but self-esteem can absolutely be improved.

Two major components (there are many more) are:

1) Perceived inferiority (Self-Acceptance)

Everyone benchmarks their own life, success, skills, etc... against another group. Sometimes the choice of benchmark group is unrealistic, sometimes the person is just hanging out with a crowd where they don't really fit, sometimes it's necessary to take a step back and realize that comparisons to others don't really matter.

All of these can be improved by finding a better social circle (fit), attending different group activities, or reflecting on negative thoughts and re-framing.

2) Actual lack of skill/knowledge (Self-Improvement)

If the lack of self-esteem comes from actual gaps in knowledge or skill then the solution is to keep a running list of gaps and make an effort to improve them. A common item here might be fitness. Many people have low self-esteem due to sub par fitness and/or health habits and directly remedy the issue by embarking upon a fitness regimen. Another situation might be feeling incompetent in a specific area of domain knowledge and this one can be remedied through an active effort to read/learn/study and become competent in the troublesome areas.

Being honest with yourself (even if it's harsh), assessing your weaknesses, and working to improve them can go a long way to improve self-esteem.

scarmig• 9 years ago

I've done so.

I strongly encourage some kind of fitness routine or activity. I think a lot of cases of low self esteem come from a mind-body disconnect. And that allows for resentment or even hatred of your own body. That hatred may be subconscious or overt.

Actually engaging in a fitness routine undermines that dichotomy, particularly a skill based one. Coupled with the fact that pretty much everyone treats fit, attractive people way better in their daily lives, you rapidly build up a virtuous cycle of self esteem, fitness, and social approval.

J-dawg8• 9 years ago

Thanks, that's encouraging. I don't think it's the whole story because I work out fairly hard and still have low self-esteem, but it's good to know that change is possible.

ada19813• 9 years ago

Yes, with myself and also with clients.

The biggest game changer is when you realize that success is not the possession of any characteristic or accomplishment but rather the ability to feel authentically.

When you know on a deep somatic level that all of your emotions are valid and sacred and aren't afraid to feel them it brings with it a deep confidence and connection.

J-dawg8• 9 years ago

I don't really understand this, but it sounds very interesting. Could you expand upon it, or recommend any books or articles that explain the idea?

vlehto• 9 years ago

There seems to be several obvious mistakes in the article and in the original movement:

A. Idea that you can easily mold the core beliefs of other people by simply telling them to be like this or that. It's not generally true. But low esteem specifically makes it difficult to accept positive external feedback. Even when it's hard earned and genuine.

B. Treating human self image as one dimensional linear thing. Where on the other end you have narcissism and on the other complete self-worthlessness and ensuing violent depression.

The reality seems to be lot more nuanced. There are things like self-respect, self-compassion and sense of (potential) usefulness to others. None of these are hard linked to how good or bad you feel about yourself.

C. Some kind of misunderstanding of Narcissism. You can never turn normal healthy adult into narcissist by praising too much. (But you may cause some other negative effects.) Actual narcissist are often depressed themselves. Actual narcissist often aren't particularly interested in putting selfies to Instagram.

known• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs is more complete

cubano• 9 years ago

My personal-often-difficult journey through life tells me this...there are at least two types of self-esteem, and probably several more.

Achievement-esteem of course has to do with the trophy stuff and doing things your peers can't do as well. I excelled at this sort of thing and have all sort of Al Bundy-type anecdotes I'm sure no one wants to hear.

The much more important type of self-esteem is the one that forms much earlier in life and is instilled by your parents love and devotion, and is the one that is much more important to your future-self's emotional well being.

My personal experience tells me this one drives addiction and probably many criminal behaviors as we get older.

As a proponent of the Einstein's block universe theory, I often wonder if everything is already baked in and we are just what we are destined to be anyway, so what does it matter how we feel really?

Briel• 9 years ago

I think one of the detrimental effects of the positivity movement is, it implies it's wrong and unnecessary to feel bad. Of course, if you feel bad for days on end, there's an ongoing clinical or situational issue. If certain external triggers consistently cause you to feel bad, you can dig deep to find the reason and start to address it.

But to feel bad as a short-lived (hours to a few days) reaction to an event at least partially within your control? Like getting a bad mark? Or screwing up a work project? It's completely normal and similar to the physical pain felt when you touch a burning stove. It's a stimulus "Oh this sucks! I don't want to feel like this again so I'm going to make X, Y or Z change to avoid it."

projektir• 9 years ago

I don't think it's as simple as you state here.

There were exceptions, but when I was in school, people who were getting bad marks were getting a lot of bad marks, and kept getting them. People who got good marks mostly stuck with the good marks. People who were bullied kept getting bullied day in day out.

That's ongoing, but each individual event you would say is "normal". I think it's a question to ask whether getting a bad mark on some test that some people are obviously better suited for than others is actually a moral failing and not a happenstance? Is being a bullying target a moral failing? (I say moral failing because the emotional pain for such events is often of a "I really fundamentally suck" variety)

It seemed much more reminiscent of a system where the attributes of children somehow fell into place and defined how much suffering each of them was going to end up with. I find it difficult to say anything good about this.

Maybe it's the opposite: the side effects of the failure of the self-esteem movement is that we're back to saying suffering is great and builds character, completely ignoring that it's not given out proportionally in the slightest.

marcosdumay2• 9 years ago

Penalties do build character, and there's no potential for achieving anything if there's no potential for failing.

We should be teaching kids that they can improve, and show them how good they are with honesty.

georgeecollins• 9 years ago

That is one of the points they make in Living with Prozac. Americans expect people to be happy and positive, and if they aren't it is a problem to be fixed.

jt2190• 9 years ago

This is not a news article, but an excerpt from an upcoming book:

Adapted from Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed And What It’s Doing To Us by Will Storr, published by Picador on 15 June...

(Edit: note the author's begging the question in the subtitle.)

pvnick• 9 years ago

Vasco and his humanist priest had their Catholic theology all wrong, and their heresy had disastrous consequences. There is a tendency within Catholic circles to view oneself only as an irredeemable sinner. This fills one with shame and causes a sort of false humility that convinces oneself to reject all good things ("his professional success was at odds with how he thought of himself; he felt he didn’t deserve it"). One further effect of focusing excessively on one's sinfulness, rather than on the love of God, is that quitting sin is much harder. The priest's belief that man is inherently good is also heresy at odds with scripture.

The truth as the Church would describe it is that man is intrinsically sinful but has been redeemed through Christ, and that should fill one's heart with joy and gratitude. No, man does not deserve any good thing, but when good things happen they should be appreciated as gifts, not rejected out of shame. This is true humility.

Some claim that self esteem should instead be replaced with self-compassion. This is a good idea that is in line with Church teaching, since to see yourself as God sees you (with unconditional love in spite of one's faults) is to adopt a perception which is based in truth, rather than the self-esteem movement which is based on convincing yourself of the lie that you are unconditionally good.

atemerev• 9 years ago

Self-esteem is obviously important, and low self-esteem can obviously be a problem.

However:

1) It is not the only problem out there; 2) Lying about somebody's achievements is not a good way to raise their self-esteem, in the same way as maxing out your credit card on indulgent purchases is not a great way to achieve happiness. It works, somewhat — just until it doesn't. 3) A better way to achieve genuine self-esteem is to solve objectively difficult problems, successfully. Tests and exams are not problems; they were meant to give you an objective feedback so you could adjust your priorities accordingly. The straightest way to unlink test results from self-esteem is to give them in private and discourage comparison. 4) Like in sport, self-improvement is what counts in life, not the compared results. You are better that you were a year before, and that's all that matters.

josephv• 9 years ago

The entire system of institutionalizing your children to teach them to be functional is the root cause, never let whatever self-esteemers or new mathers or whatever goofy next educational horizon the principal learned in their post-doc educational studies class override the laborious, at times excruciating, but ultimately rewarding goal of tactical, immediate, and focused remediation of your children's emotional vulnerabilities.

Tangentially, this is what the book Frankenstein was all about, the effect of education on different individuals, the most memorable of the monster being educated only formally, presumably by being given 'you showed up ribbons', with no family support structure, and growing up... with a rotten brain.

danans3• 9 years ago

The writer throws his credibility under the bus with this:

On the downside, it also included a white man in a turban who predicted the work of the task force would be so powerful, it would cause the sun to rise in the west

White men in Turbans might be Gora Sikhs, who are sincere adherents of their particular faith, and are undeserving of this bigotry if the speaker was a member of the group.

Even if it was just a white man in a turban, so what? There is no minimum melanin requirement for wearing one. And how does that information advance the article's argument at all?

ramjamrodeo• 9 years ago

I took a second look at that point as well. On reflection, I think the author's message was that it was a mistake from a matter of public perception of the group and the proposal. The idea was already extremely left-wing and having that image of someone supporting it kept it out there.

andreyk• 9 years ago

I think you are being a bit harsh here. Sure, the white man in a turban might be a totally normal person capable of carrying out good work. But in terms of probabilities, there's also a significant chance they are an esoteric new-agey type (in my mind). The latter possibility is confirmed by the "predicted the work of the task force would be so powerful, it would cause the sun to rise in the west" bit, which is the actually critical part of that quote. So the turban bit is included to give a fuller picture of this weird new-agey type who says ridiculous things like that, or so it seems to me.

danans3• 9 years ago

The author provided no context for the sun rising in the west comment, which in every usage I've seen is a metaphor for a fundamental societal shift, not a literal astronomical prediction. The principle of charity applies there too.

The reality that a large number of Gora Sikhs practice the faith they were raised in undermines the new-agey argument, unless one is singling out their actual religion which is centuries old in it's current form.

The only other explanation for the comment is the appalling idea that a person should be ridiculed for adopting the culture of which they don't share the dominant adherents' physical phenotype.

danans3• 9 years ago

As with many social reactionary trends, it seems like one flawed system (all spoils to the "winner") was replaced with another flawed system (there are no winners).

The former system tends to reward those who have inborn or socially provided advantages, and makes the prize the end goal rather than the process. This can result in winning-at-all-cost behavior, even if results in damage to oneself or society (i.e perf enhancing drugs).

The reactionary everyone-is-a-winner approach robs people of signal they need to optimize their efforts to succeed.

IMO a saner approach would be to encourage competition but not make suffering via social exclusion or destitution the cost of losing.

Intra-group competition within those bounds can make the group stronger, but left unchecked can do the opposite.

slaunchwise• 9 years ago

So this must be where Barney came from. "Everyone is special" was such pablum.

ksk• 9 years ago

I think people on both sides of this issue like to blabber a lot about human psychology and high falutin theories. At the end of the day, in any domain, you have to actually implement your ideas, and actually show that they work. A broken system that sometimes works is better than an ideal system that has never been shown to work.

ada19813• 9 years ago

It's unfortunate that this guy polluted the memesphere with this. The research into the lifelong benefits of children having access to secure attachment figures is mindblowing -- would have been great if he got passionate about approaches that actually have big impacts.

You can build "self-esteem" from a variety of things, the most sustainable and healthy of which is from a deep sense that you can handle whatever emotions come up in your system and by extension, whatever life throws at you.

Building "self-esteem" on the fact that you accomplished something -- say, won a tournament or built a company and not on the experience of not abandoning yourself along the way is a recipe for unfulfillment and a string of other ills.

Healthy self-esteem is not built by giving everyone a trophy or protecting them from their own emotions but rather, helping children learn that they are accepted no matter what emotions they are having and thus learn to accept themselves no matter the emotional experience they are having.

As a former World Games Invitee, I can tell you that losing in competition is painful. For me, often debilitatingly so. And it wasn't until I was able to explore the roots of that pain response that I could heal old traumas from my childhood of my father giving us the silent treatment for days at a time after losing as a high school football coach and the unhealthy relationship he had with performance coming from farther upstream in our family system.

Our culture has created a false dichotomy of "positive and negative" emotions where we avoid conflicts, numb out with drugs, sex, TV, accomplishment, religion, food, conflict, drama, criticism and more. Our nervous systems don't feel safe processing anger, sadness, despair, and grief and so we turn to Psychiatry to suppress the symptoms vs. developing the capacity to be with our entire range of emotion and present experience.

crawfordcomeaux19• 9 years ago

I couldn't help codependently caretaking everyone in this thread by attempting to other-esteem everyone through the upvoting of all comments.

The great self-esteem con

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