Witnessing The Power of Process over Outcome

With Covid outbreak, I got locked at home with 3 year old. It was big challenge for me to keep him entertained, engaged in some activity along with work. So to encourage him to do activities on his own I started using praise. Thinking it to boost his confidence and to motivate him to do activities on his own. If he finished something, I said — (“You finished it. You are good at it.” ; “You did it on your own. You are smart” ; “You figured out. You are intelligent”, etc) . It did encourage him and I could see that in his face. Whenever he finished something, he came running to show it .

Things started settling a bit. When some more time passed, I started observing another behaviour pattern where he will give up something in middle if he found the activity/task tough e.g. If he is colouring and colour is going out of the line, he used to say ‘I don’t know. I can’t get it in the line. I don’t want to colour’. This started happening often. I was still praising him but it didn’t seem to work any longer.

Around the same time, I started reading around the concept of Growth mindset and Fixed Mindset. I stumbled on an idea — “Praise the effort, not the child (or the outcome)”. Research shows that praising children’s ability (“You’re really good at this!”; “Aren’t you a clever kid?”) conveys a fixed mindset — ie, the belief that abilities are simply fixed. Such praise may feel good in the moment, but it makes students worried about difficulty and mistakes, worried about losing their “good” label. On the other hand, “Process praise” conveys to students that they can develop their abilities and it suggests how this can be done. Researchers found that it makes children more likely to want challenging work and to persist when the work gets more difficult. It struck cord with me and I decided to give it a try.

So I started looking out for opportunities. When my son finished something, I started calling out :

• I see you put in lot of effort to get it done.
• I observed you patiently trying it multiple times till you figured a way to make progress on it.
• I saw you struggle and put in lot of effort & time to figure it.

It doesn’t mean that he finished everything. He did struggle with some tasks and needed help. At those moments, I did let him know that I was around if he needed help. Some of the statements that I used at such stage were :

• You don’t know it yet. With practice and effort, you will be able to figure out .
• Show we what you have tried till now. We can figure out next step together.
• I am around, let me know if you need any help.

I used this approach all the time — when he struggled with something , when he succeed in some task.

Systemically we are conditioned to look at outcome from childhood — be it results, scores, tests, etc. So it was a challenge for me. I had to let go of the expectations related to my idea of outcome or timeline.

Two weeks passed and I could see his behaviour shifting. Rather on giving up or getting irritated when he struggled, he tried a different approach or asked for help for next step or took a break before trying again. It was a positive shift. He was enjoying he process and learning. He picked up colouring which he gave up earlier. Below is one of his imagination :

Another instance also confirmed this shift. One evening my son was trying to button and unbutton the shirt. At this age they are still developing motor skills. And I could see he was struggling. I went and sat next to him. He looked at me and said — ‘It is hard. But I know with practice, I will be able to get better at it. You go. If I need help, I will call you’. That did bring smile to my face.

I was curious if its repeatable so I asked my cousin who was in similar boat to give it a try with his kids and he shared back the similar observations.

Maybe it was easier as kids have clean slate at this age. However, this experiment showed me the power of praising the effort (as well as the strategies, focus, perseverance and information-seeking) as compared to the outcome — with particular emphasis on learning and progress. As a result, outcome improved automatically.