Praise vs. Validation
Growing up my mother would always say “follow your heart.” That simple message from a mother to her youngest daughter has always stuck with me because it taught me to go inward to access my own truth. It was meaningful that my mother trusted my judgment. As parents we ride the line between stepping back to keep the original essence of our children in tact, and stepping in to guide our children towards authentic self realization. This is the sacred work of the parent and it is a challenging balance to strike. Often the difficulty in maintaining this balance has more to do with the relationship we have with ourselves than our relationship with our children. Nothing embodies this more than a parent’s usage of praise vs. validation.
The Difference Between Praise and Validation
Simply put, praise puts the emphasis on the outcome while validation values the process. When we praise our children we are making a judgement call on their final product. For instance, when our child shows us a picture they have drawn and we respond by saying “great job!” we are providing our child with an external judgement about the drawing. The instability of praise is that it comes to be relied on, and without it the questions lingers: “Am I good enough?” Validation, on the other hand, places the focus back on the child and their process. Instead of “great job,” we may offer validation by saying, “It looks like you worked so hard on that. You must feel so proud of yourself.” While praise tells our children that the reward for their work is in the external acknowledgment of others, validation affirms the idea that the reward is in their own fulfillment. When it comes down to it, validation is all about trust. To validate the choice and process of our children is to say, “I trust your judgement.” Providing this trust encourages our children to, in turn, trust themselves.
Why Do We Praise Our Children?
Our resistance and difficulty in trusting the judgment of our children may be an indication of the lack of trust we have for our own judgement. We may shower our children in praise because we ourselves rely on the acceptance and recognition of others. So we may think “If I do not envelop my child in praise then how will they know that they are good enough?” We may feel this way because we have a difficult time accessing our own feelings of worthiness without external confirmation. What we must remember is that our children are blank slates. They have not yet come to depend on praise from others to feel whole and good. We have the opportunity to preserve this by nurturing their inherent feeling of virtue. Feeling good enough, without the acknowledgment of others, is our children’s birth right.
Is Praise Ever Good?
So does praise have any place in our relationship with our children? Yes, but a little bit goes a very long way. Consider practicing the 80% validation and 20% praise guideline. Another way to go about it is to only praise when you really mean it. Save your “great job!” or “that’s fantastic!” for the times that you genuinely feel that way. This way our infrequent words of praise maintain their authenticity and simply affirm the internal worthiness that we are nurturing with our frequent validation.
Here are two tips to help you validate instead of praise:
Put the ball back in their court. When your child shows you a drawing they’ve created and they are seeking your praise, instead try saying “I see that you used a lot of red. What made you choose that color?” or, “How did you learn to draw such a realistic-looking elephant?” Bring the attention back to your child and encourage them to focus on their own feelings of pride and satisfaction.
Bring your focus to the process rather than the final product. Affirm the idea that the time and hard work of the process has value. That the reward does not come from the external praise of the final product. Try saying something like “That must have taken a long time. It must feel so good to have completed it!”
What I value most about learning to validate instead of praise is that the basic principals apply to all of our relationships. Learning to validate the ones we love allows us to affirm their intrinsic worthiness in a profound way. It says, “I hear you, I see you, and I trust your process. Your worthiness does not depend on the external judgements of others.”