PILs only praising DS for being "clever"

[ShadowStorm]

Been staying with the PILs for a few days, and have noticed that whenever they praise DS (22 months) for anything, they always throw in "clever". Regardless of what DS has done.

So far, things that he's been told that he's a clever boy for, or has done a clever thing, include:

Saying a word PILs haven't heard him say before
Sleeping through the night
Eating all his food at mealtime
Standing still for a nappy change
Kicking a ball to someone
Running without falling over
Scribbling with his crayons
Cuddling PILs

It's nice that they're being positive and praising him - but - the constant use of "clever" is really starting to get on my nerves.

Partly because I'd prefer DS to be praised for making an effort than for being clever, and partly because I can't see how some of these things he's getting told he's a "clever boy" about have anything at all to do with intelligence.

I haven't said anything so far, but WIBU to ask PIL's to stop using the word "clever" whenever they praise DS? Or should I just do my best to ignore it and keep my mouth shut for the next few days until we go home?

I prefer to praise for effort as well. However, that is my job (and dads of course) to see that happen.

If Gparents want to keep calling them clever then so be it. It isn't harmful and as long as they are getting praised for effort as well from me who is with them more then it really isn't a big deal.

Parenting is hard enough as it is, do not sweat the small stuff. My husbands nan thinks he craps glitter, it hasn't harmed him.

"GPs are notoriously sensitive about being challenged on anything to do with methods of bringing up children"

This really made me laugh in the context of the prevailing Mumsnet attitude to PIls!

I don't think you're being unreasonable to be bothered by it, but I do think it would be unreasonable to try and actively tackle it. Just make sure that you use the phrases you like in front of them and it may rub off on them- you never know!

I love all your posts Morloth - so true.

People will assume that a child is thick and can't work anything out for themselves- have more faith- they are very astute.

The praising for effort can go badly wrong. I was a very conscientious student at school, quiet, well behaved, always produced work above average and met all deadlines. Therefore it was assumed that I was putting a lot of effort into it- in reality I needed a bomb under me!! I could have produced much better work.

It doesn't pay to over think these things.

If I get to be a grandparent it is entirely different from being a parent- I have done the parent bit it will be time for fun! It won't be my job to get them to eat greens etc

It made me hoot too curlew! You wonder if people read the same posts !

It probably wouldn't matter how many hundreds of us popped up on this thread saying "Actually, this has been a real problem for me" would it. There'll still be people reflexively banging on about how they never trust experts and sneering at the OP for daring to give a shit about something.

Just be glad they don't clap in his face when he's crying or tell him he's naughty for not eating their roast dinner while he's getting 4 teeth through at the same time my pil did with my DD

I was at my son's school yesterday for a special sports assembly and prize giving,

There were loads of trophies, and the school tried as hard as they could not to make any of them more important than any of the others. But the kids knew that "Most Improved Footballer of the Year" wasn't as prestigious as "Player of the Year" however hard the school tried.......

My mother still praises me for working so hard when I have been doing very little mumsnetting all morning. Imho the experts have got it wrong. I do give a smallish shit and I can see that all this praise for effort has not done me any favours. The effort had to take place inside my head. They couldn't see what was going on in there. Often- not a lot.

I have said repeatedly that OP isn't unreasonable but there is nothing whatever she can do about it! You cannot control your DCs environment- it takes some new parents a while to understand this. You can control yourself and you can sever connections- nothing more. And why would you sever connections over something so trivial?

People constantly think I am very organised, creative etc when really I am not- I quite like them saying it though!

Well, I wouldn't sever connections either exotic. I said above I didn't think it was worth worrying about in this instance because it's only occasional grandparent praise.

I just can't figure out why some people (for example, morloth, whom you state you agree with) seem so very committed to denying that the "clever" thing might be a problem at all, in the face of a good half-dozen individual testimonies that I've read here as well as expert investigation.

I'm not hugely into this rewarding for effort rather than achievement tbh. I endlessly got lower effort grades than some others despite getting higher marks and it used to p* me off no end. The teachers had absolutely no way of knowing whether or not I'd put in less effort than anyone else.

But I do think wider skills such as kindness, empathy, etc. should be recognised and rewarded at home as well as academic achievement or 'cleverness'. My DS's school are really into this actually. There's nothing worse than an intellectual lacking any emotional empathy

LOL, I am not committed, I am chatting on a message board, about a particular OP because I am trying to avoid doing my tax.

Over praising kids can definitely be a problem, along with never telling them (albeit gently) if they are crap at something.

GPs are supposed to think their grandkids are hot shit. IMO that is normal and to be expected. All kids hear from this sort of interaction is how much grandma/pa loves them.

I bet 20 years ago the 'experts' were all banging on about self esteem weren't they?

Experts my arse, read the books by all means, but a bit of common sense goes a long way.

As the mum I balance my praise with gentle and constructive criticism where needed. When I am a gran I look forward to spoiling my GKs rotten and letting them know I think they are the best things to have ever happened to planet earth.

YABU and just looking for reasons to be offended.
Do the unreasonable bastards breathe as well?

I use clever to all my dgc,both genders, whenever they do/say anything which I see as an achievement. They like it and their parents like it. Of course it is 'clever' if a child does something well for the first time. Be grateful your child has lovely caring gp.

You're still doing it. It's weird. You're now talking about over-praising and the need for constructive criticism as if that's the danger we're all talking about - it isn't, no-one has mentioned over-praising that I recall, it's a separate problem.

You are not interested in the possibility that anyone (like me, or Liara, or any of the other people who have posted here to say so) might have experienced a genuine problem with the "clever" label, that we might have started associating "being clever" with our self-worth as a result of a lot of our early praise revolving around "clever", and thereby become anxious/perfectionists etc. It doesn't matter a flying fuck whether you "balance" the clever label with constructive criticism for the occasions when a child is being less than clever (in fact I can't think of a better recipe for perfectionism). The point is you should not be focussing in on one particular label at all.

Now, this may well not be a problem you are giving your kids because you vary the praise so no one label comes to be their thing - well, good for you. But we are saying we have had this problem, we recognise the danger that the OP is referring to. We see where she is coming from. If this problem isn't of interest to you or relevant to you, which it plainly isn't, I don't know why you're so eager to deny that it exists for some people (falling back on the old "experts know nothing" trope to do so).

First of all, not everybody who writes a child manual and becomes the latest fashion in child rearing is an expert in the academic sense of the word. Sometimes they are parents or nannies who go from their own experiences. The-lady-who-must-not-be-named is a former nanny, not somebody with qualifications in child psychology.

Sometimes they are indeed paediatricians or psychologists, but if you look closely at their writing you may still find they are working on anecdotal evidence and their own hunches and haven't actually conducted any kind of scientific study. Only rarely are they experts in the sense that a biologist who writes on the mating strategies of catfish or a biochemist who writes on the effects of drug A on the red blood cells is likely to be an expert.

Though I have read a lot of "Expert X thinks that we all do too much of Y these days" in publications like Reader's Digest, there don't seem to much in the way of reference to actual studies. Sometimes they may well be building on studies conducted by others, but you rarely get to see their assessment and workings-out.

Secondly, you need to read their remarks in context. If I remember rightly, the articles about the effects of overpraise have all been about the effects of overpraise in teaching and possibly by parents of older children, not about grandparents and babies.

MadBusLady, didn't see your post. I do see what you are saying and I am sure the clever label has done you harm.

But are you really saying that all that happened simply because your grandparents called you clever when you were a toddler, while your parents and teachers maintained a more sensible way of speaking? Because that is what the OP is about. Doting grandparents gushing to a baby.

This is what a lot of us don't agree with: the idea that grandparents have to do everything in line with the parents, because the slightest thing done differently is seen as undermining the parent.

To me, this is delegating and lazy parenting. I am the parent: I do the tough and unpopular job of parenting. I don't expect my parents to do it: they already have. My children have to accept that while grandparents are lovely, it's what I say that goes.

As for teachers they do the job of teaching and I expect them to do that in line with the latest findings (such as they may be) on pedagogy. But again, they don't expect me to follow the latest pedagogical instructions in everything I do with dc at home.

We all have different jobs, we each do our own.

Indeed, cory. I would want to see some of these 'experts' own children before I ditch my tried, tested and succesful methods for the 'latest' research - which will no doubt have been replaced in 20 years time.
As a grandparent I will keep my advice to myself and not interfere but I am not going to be expected to change my conversation - I shall smile, nod and ignore.

I don't think the OP is concerned about overpraising, nor has anyone suggested that the GPs are overpraising.

The issue is the overuse of a single adjective to praise a child in every situation, which doesn't give the child much useful information about what exactly they did so well and which, over time, becomes a label that the child identifies with.

It really doesn't matter whether the label is negative (the naughty one, the messy one, the noisy one, the dim one) or positive (the good one, the clever one, the sensible one), labels aren't great for children because children can end up feeling limited and defined by the label.

There are so many fantastic adjectives to use when giving praise. The OP and her ILs might want to get in the habit of using them, before the baby is old enough to notice too much.

Cory (again) this isn't about over-praising per se. This is about the pros and cons of praising intelligence as a general quality, and giving children labels that they feel they have to live up to.

It's certainly unfortunate that the media serve up everyone and their dog as "experts" as if we are to take them all at the same value; it results in cynicism about actual experts which I don't believe is in anyone's interests.

However, the point about shoddy "expertise" is moot here because at least one of the experts working on the problem is a Stanford psychologist who is quoted at length and her papers linked to in this thread.

Who would have guessed that the grandparents role was so stressful?! Perhaps OP could write them a list of adjectives - maybe even a whole crib sheet on how to talk to a child.

x-post. No, I've already said (twice) I don't think grandparents' praise is really anything for the OP to worry about, it's too irregular. But I definitely recognise the problem she is referencing and I don't think it can be denied that it exists.