A note before we begin:I am a father who reads child development research, not a psychologist or a teacher. This article shares published studies and what I am trying at home. Please treat it as general information, not professional advice for your child.
A few days ago, a short video stopped me mid-scroll.
A reporter finds a little boy in tears and asks him what is wrong. The boy says he loses everywhere. He loses at every game he plays.
The reporter asks him, “What does losing mean to you?” The boy answers, “When I play a game with someone, or run in a race, I always get left behind. So I lose.” Then the reporter says something very simple. That is not losing. You are learning, and tomorrow you will do it better.
The boy’s whole face changes. The reporter asks him again, “So what are you doing?” And the boy answers, smiling now, “I am learning.”
Nothing about the race had changed. Only one word had.
That video stayed with me because it shows, in a few seconds of conversation, something researchers have been measuring for nearly three decades. The words adults choose become the story a child tells about themselves. And one of the most loving phrases we use, “You’re so smart,” turns out to be one of the riskiest.
The Puzzle Study That Changed How We Think About Praise
In 1998, psychologists Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck at Columbia University published six studies with fifth-grade children.
Each child worked on a set of puzzles that were easy enough to do well on. Then each child heard one sentence of praise.
- Some were told they must be smart at these problems.
- Others were told they must have worked hard at these problems.
That single sentence was the only difference. What happened next was not small.
They chose differently. The children were offered a choice between an easy task that would make them look good and a harder one they could learn from. Of the children praised for being smart, 67% chose the easy option. Of the children praised for effort, 92% chose the harder one.
They handled difficulty differently. All the children were then given much harder puzzles, and all of them struggled. The children praised for being smart enjoyed the work less, wanted to stop sooner, and were more likely to say they were simply not good at it.
They performed differently. On a final set of puzzles, as easy as the first, the “smart” group scored worse than they had at the start. The “worked hard” group scored better.
They even reported differently. When asked to report their scores to children at another school, nearly 4 in 10 of the “smart” group raised their numbers. In the effort group it was closer to 1 in 10.
These were children of the same age, doing the same puzzles. One sentence separated them.
Why “Smart” Becomes a Burden
“Smart” is a label. It describes what a child is, not what a child did. And a label has to be protected.
Think about it from the child’s side. If doing well means I am smart, then doing badly must mean I am not. So the safest move is to stay away from anything I might fail at. Easy tasks protect the label. Hard tasks threaten it.
Effort works the other way. Effort is not something a child has. It is something a child does, and can do again tomorrow. When a hard puzzle beats a child who was praised for effort, the conclusion is not “I’m not smart.” It is “I need to try longer, or try another way.”
Carol Dweck later gave these two beliefs the names many parents now know. A fixed mindset says ability is something you either have or lack. A growth mindset says ability grows with practice.
I have seen the label problem outside research too. When schools hand out top positions generously to keep parents happy, children learn to chase the title instead of the learning. I wrote about that in our article on rising fees and falling learning. Praise at home can do the same thing on a smaller scale.
It Starts Earlier Than Most Parents Think
The children in the Columbia study were in fifth grade. Later studies found the same pattern in far younger children.
In toddlers. Researchers from the University of Chicago and Stanford University filmed more than 50 families at home when the children were one, two and three years old. They counted how the parents praised: for effort and actions, or for personal qualities. Five years later they met the children again, now seven and eight years old.
The children whose parents had used a larger share of effort praise were more willing to take on challenges. They could name more ways to recover from a setback. And they were more likely to believe that ability can grow.
Notice what that study measured. It was not a lesson or a programme. It was the ordinary sentences parents said while their toddlers played.
In preschoolers. In 2017, researchers from the University of California San Diego, the University of Toronto and Hangzhou Normal University played a guessing game with three-year-olds and five-year-olds. Some children were told, “You are so smart.” Others were told, “You did very well this time.”
Then the adult left the room, after the child promised not to peek at the answers. The children who had been called smart were clearly more likely to peek.
Even at three, a child who is told they are smart can feel pressure to keep looking smart, and will bend the rules to manage it.
What to Say Instead
The fix is small. Praise what the child did, not what the child is.
| Instead of | Try |
|---|---|
| “You’re so smart.” | “You kept going even when it was hard.” |
| “You’re a natural at this.” | “I can see how much you practised.” |
| “So clever, you got it right.” | “How did you work that out?” |
| “What a brilliant artist.” | “Tell me about the colours you chose.” |
| “See, that was easy for you.” | “That looked easy. Shall we find a trickier one?” |
| “Never mind, you’re still the best.” | “That didn’t work this time. What would you try differently?” |
These are the lines I try to use with my own two sons. Three habits sit behind them.
- Be specific. Name the thing you actually saw. “You tried three different ways to fit that piece” tells a child you were watching.
- Ask as well as tell. “How did you figure that out?” invites children to notice their own thinking. The researchers behind the preschool study recommend exactly this kind of question.
- Add the word “yet.” Dweck calls it the power of “not yet.” “I can’t do it” becomes “I can’t do it yet,” and the door stays open.
Four Mistakes to Avoid
1. Praising effort that is not there. Children know when they did not really try. “Great effort!” for a rushed job teaches them that our words mean little. Dweck herself has warned that effort praise is not a consolation prize. If hard work is not producing progress, the helpful response is to look at the method together.
2. Praising everything. “Good job” forty times a day becomes background noise. Fewer, more specific comments carry more weight.
3. Inflating the praise. Researchers at Utrecht University found that adults tend to give extra-large praise, such as “That is incredibly beautiful!”, to children with low self-esteem. Those were the very children who then avoided harder tasks, as if afraid of not living up to it. Plain, honest praise served them better.
4. Expecting magic. Effort praise is not a formula that guarantees success. A national study of more than 12,000 secondary school students, published in the journal Nature in 2019, found that teaching a growth mindset had real but modest benefits, strongest for students who were struggling. One sentence will not transform a child. Thousands of sentences, over years, shape how a child talks to themselves.
Where Charades Fits In
Games are where children meet winning and losing most often, so games are the best place to practise this. Charades has a quiet advantage here. It does not need a score.
Nobody is the “smartest” player. What everyone sees is the trying: the child who waves an arm like an elephant’s trunk, changes the idea when nobody guesses, and tries again. That is effort, visible to the whole room.
Three ways to use it:
- Praise the acting, not the result. “I loved how you used your whole body for that one” lands better than “You’re so good at this.”
- Praise the guessers too. “You kept guessing until you got it” rewards persistence.
- When a turn falls flat, borrow the reporter’s line. That was not losing. That was learning how to show it next time.
For your next family game, try these effort-themed charades ideas:
- A baby learning to walk
- Learning to ride a bicycle
- Building a tower that falls, then building it again
- Tying shoelaces
- An ant carrying something heavy
- Climbing a mountain
- Planting a seed and waiting for it to grow
- A bird building a nest
- Learning to swim
- Practising the same kick again and again
After each one, ask the actor a single question: “What was the hardest part to show?” You will be praising the process without even trying. For more ideas, use the free charades generator on our homepage.
Same Love, Different Message
“You’re so smart” and “You worked hard” come from the same place. Both say: I see you, and I am proud of you.
But one tells a child who they are. The other shows them what they can do.
The boy in that video did not win his next race on camera. He simply walked away with a better word for what was happening to him. Our children need the same from us, many times a day, in very ordinary moments.
So the next time your child runs to you shouting “I did it!”, try answering with what you saw them do.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it harmful to ever tell my child they are smart?
No. One comment will not harm a child. The research is about patterns, meaning what a child hears most often over months and years. If most of your praise names effort, choices and progress, an occasional “clever boy” or “clever girl” is nothing to worry about.
At what age should I start praising effort?
From the beginning. The University of Chicago and Stanford study recorded parents praising children as young as one, and that early praise was linked to the children’s attitudes five years later. With a toddler it can be as simple as “You tried again!” or “You stacked them so carefully.”
What is the difference between person praise and process praise?
Person praise is about a fixed quality: “You’re smart,” “You’re talented,” “You’re a natural.” Process praise is about what the child did: the effort, the method, the patience, the improvement. Researchers use these two terms, and it is process praise that is linked to children welcoming challenges.
Should I stop praising results?
No. Results matter, and children deserve to enjoy them. Simply connect the result to what produced it: “You got them all right. All that practice paid off.”
My child is already afraid of making mistakes. Is it too late?
It is not too late. Beliefs about ability can change at any age. Start with your own reaction to mistakes, theirs and yours, and talk openly about things you are still learning. If the fear is intense or affects daily life, please speak with a qualified professional.
Does this apply outside schoolwork?
Yes. “You’re a natural” on the sports field or “You’re so talented” at the drawing table is the same kind of label. In sport, art, music and games, praise the practice, the choices and the persistence.
What if grandparents or teachers keep saying “You’re so smart”?
You cannot script every adult in your child’s life, and you do not need to. What a child hears most often at home carries great weight. There is no need to correct anyone in front of the child. Just keep adding your own message: “And I saw how hard you worked for it.”