8 Compliments You Seriously Need to Stop Giving to Your Kids

“You’re so smart!”

Previous generations may have been very strict and held back from praising their children, but parents today may be overcompensating. (Here are 52 of the worst parenting tips parents get.) According to child development experts, the point of praise is to encourage positive behavior. But simply being “smart” isn’t a behavior, and kids don’t perceive it as something they can control. So praising them for it “is not helpful because kids—and adults—usually think that being smart is innate and fixed,” says Christia Spears Brown, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Kentucky. “They think you are born with a certain amount of ‘smartness,’ and if schoolwork comes easily, then you are smart, and if schoolwork is difficult, then you are not smart.” So when they struggle or fail, they will find it that much more discouraging and insurmountable a problem. Instead, studies have shown that parental praise for kids’ hard work instead of their inherent abilities better develops their perseverance. “Saying things like ‘I am so proud of how hard you worked on your math,’ or ‘I am proud of how hard you studied for spelling’ tells a child that success is due to effort,” Dr. Brown says. “Then, when kids face a difficulty, they are more likely to work harder to be successful than to give up because they simply ‘aren’t smart enough.'”