Words of Encouragement to increase Persistence in Children

What is the importance of congratulating your kid on doing a daily chore? Try praising your kids for brushing their teeth properly or keeping their rooms tidy. To become healthy and successful adults, children need to persist on tasks that they might not necessarily consider easy or fun, like studying, exercising, or brushing one’s teeth. Throughout childhood, persistence behavior changes daily, but the factors that shape this variability in persistence are understudied. 

A new study published in Child Development by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and the Sante Fe Institute, analyzed daily behaviors in three-year-olds and examined the relationship between their persistence on the task and parental praise. The findings showed that children’s persistence fluctuates from day to day and is related to parent talk. Children did their tasks promptly on days when their parents used more praise and less instruction. This leads to the conclusion that parent praise causes positive changes in children’s behavior.