6 compliments that are ruining your children’s happiness
Are your saying things that can lead to manipulative thinking in the future?
Jessie Shepherd, MA, AMCHC
Here are 5 helpful pointers to consider as we make our compliments more effective and self-sustaining.
1. “Good job!”
- I say this at least 20 times a day, and I have had to painstakingly correct myself over and over. The problem with this phrase is that your children start to rely on your approval. They know they did something right but they don’t know what. It is not specific to the action so they become dependent on you to judge how positive their behavior was. We want them to do good things based on their motivation. Children need to know what specific action they did right, so that as they grow up, they will get a sense of pride based on their actions and not just from the approval of others.
Jessie Shepherd, MA, LCMHC is a Mental Health Counselor in Utah. She has a Masters Degree in Mental Health Counseling from the University of Phoenix and a Bachelors degree in Psychology from the University of Utah. Her focus is treating trauma, eating disorders and adjustment issues in adults, adolescents, children and their families. She utilizes Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Play Therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Neurological Feedback. She also works with performance anxiety and performance enhancement using EMDR and Neurological Feedback.