The Well Being

Helping children find their voice, carve out their space and be encouraged:

We can empower children through encouragement versus through praise. Encouraging allows children to develop an internal sense of reward and satisfaction from within, rather than growing dependent on receiving external reward/praise from others.

Differences between Encouragement and Praise:
1. Encouragement inspires an internal locus of evaluation vs. an external locus of evaluation
2. Encouragement focuses on effort rather than evaluating the end product
Acknowledge an accomplishment by stating what happened: “You put that together yourself; you put a lot of hard work and effort into building that” rather than “nice job; I like it”
3. Praise can be judgmental
4. Praise creates an approval-oriented dynamic (seeking approval from others)

Ways to Encourage Children:
1. Focus on assets, strengths, uniqueness, efforts and progress
2. Reframe problems in more hopeful ways
3. Use wonder statements: “I’m wondering what you think is inside the box” instead of asking a direct question (“what’s inside the box?”)
4. Return responsibility back to child: - Think before doing for the child, what the child can do for self
- Returning responsibility increases self-direction, self-conficdence and independence
- “You can choose/decide”
- “That’s something you can try
- “Show me what you want me to do”
- “Lets try together”

Let’s continue to and our youth