How to praise children to help them grow up confident and successful

Wallace is the author of a parenting book called "Never Enough: When Achievement Pressure Becomes Toxic and What We Can Do About It"(Never Enough: When Performance Pressure Becomes Toxic and What We Can Do About It) Instead of highlighting achievements like getting good grades, focus on the specific personality traits that lead to your child's success, experts say.

“Paying attention to other people's strengths and acknowledging them makes everyone around us feel important,” she shares.

To gather material for his book, Wallace interviewed child psychologists and surveyed 6,500 parents across the United States, working with Richard Weissbourd, a child psychologist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Wallace's research shows that emphasizing honesty, creativity, and other positive qualities in children helps them grow up healthy.

People become stronger and more mature when they are praised less and recognized more. "We need to look at the things that are valuable inside children. They are not related to external achievements," she said.

Praising children for specific achievements can do more harm than good, according to some psychologists. Many of the children Wallace interviewed said they felt more stressed and pressured when they were praised for getting good grades or winning competitions because they only remembered the achievement and not the effort that went into it.

According to research, children who see good grades as a result of effort and character strength tend to be more successful in the future. Similarly, children benefit greatly when parents understand their children’s worth beyond their achievements.

Together, children will build the confidence to take on difficult projects without fear of failure, as well as the ability to bounce back when they stumble.

Wallace’s advice isn’t easy to follow. Identifying a child’s strengths is difficult, and the pressures of parenting often lead us to focus on fixing our child’s weaknesses. But the job of parents, Wallace says, is to find strengths and reinforce the good in each child.

She suggests families gather and take an online character strengths survey by psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman. It takes about 10 minutes to complete and creates a profile for each family member. It highlights 24 strengths, such as courage, creativity, kindness, humor, and IQ. Then discuss the results together and talk to your child about ways to demonstrate these strengths on a daily basis.

You can also ask your child's teachers for more information as they are often skilled at spotting and recognizing strengths in children.