Want your kids to grow up confident and successful? Be careful about how you praise them, says toxic-parenting researcher Jennifer Breheny Wallace.
Rather than highlighting their achievements, like a good grade on a report card, focus on the specific character traits that help enable their success, says Wallace, the author of "Never Enough: When Achievement Pressure Becomes Toxic — and What We Can Do About It."
"Noticing other people's strengths, and acknowledging them, makes people around us feel like they matter," she tells CNBC Make It.
For her book, Wallace interviewed child psychologists and surveyed 6,500 parents across the U.S. while working with Richard Weissbourd, a child psychologist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. (Wallace herself also holds a degree from Harvard University.)
Spotlighting kids' honesty, creativity and other positive attributes often helped them grow in emotionally healthy ways, Wallace's research found. People become "stronger and more mature, less by being praised and more by being known," she recalls Weissbourd saying.
"We [need to] see what is inherently valuable in them," says Wallace. "Things that have nothing to do with external achievements."
Some praise turns up the pressure
Praising children for specific achievements can actually do more harm than good, some psychologists say.
For many of the children and teens Wallace interviewed, emphasis on good grades or winning a competition increased the pressure and stress they felt to build on those accomplishments.
"That would become the new floor," Wallace says. "And it was just not sustainable for these kids. Praise came to be felt like more pressure, like: 'Now, we expect this of you.'"
Kids who see good grades as a result of effort and character strengths, rather than ability alone, tend to be more successful in the future, research shows. Similarly, children benefit significantly from understanding that their parents value them for who they are, not just for their achievements, says Wallace.
Put together, those kids can build confidence to take on challenging projects without fearing failure, and the ability to rebound when they do fall short, she adds: "Rather than praising our kids, [let] them know that we see them for who they inherently are [and get] to know them deeply for their strengths."
How to figure out exactly what to say
Wallace's strategy is easier said than done, she notes. Identifying your child's character strengths can be challenging, and the stresses of parenting often shift your focus more toward trying to fix their perceived weaknesses.
"We think it is our job to improve on our kids' weaknesses," says Wallace. "But, really, [it's] to be, in the words of researchers, 'a strength spotter' and really seeing our kids' strengths so that we can reinforce the good in them and not be so fixated on the negative."
One of her suggestions: Gather as a family to take the VIA Character Strengths Survey, a free online questionnaire developed by psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman. It takes about 10 minutes to complete, and creates individual profiles for each person — highlighting 24 positive human strengths like bravery, creativity, kindness, humor and social intelligence.
Discussing the results as a family can help you identify and talk about the ways your kids embody specific strengths on a daily basis, says Wallace.
You can also ask your kids' teachers for insight, because they're often skilled at spotting and calling out children's strengths. Wallace says she does this by annotating her kids' report cards: When a teacher writes a compliment, she underlines the praise and adds her own note.
For example, she says: "I see this too. You're always helping your siblings. How wonderful."
DON'T MISS: Want to be smarter and more successful with your money, work & life? Sign up for our new newsletter!
Get CNBC's free Warren Buffett Guide to Investing, which distills the billionaire's No. 1 best piece of advice for regular investors, do's and don'ts, and three key investing principles into a clear and simple guidebook.
