The carers at Ingrid’s nursery have a habit of saying “good girl!” or “good boy!” when the children do something they (the carers) like. It’s not just them, of course. “Good girl” seems to be the standard response when a parent wants to tell his child that he is happy / impressed / pleased with what the child did.

I don’t like that. In fact it really annoys me. Alfie Kohn says it even better in Five Reasons to Stop Saying “Good Job!”:

Once you start to see praise for what it is – and what it does – these constant little evaluative eruptions from adults start to produce the same effect as fingernails being dragged down a blackboard. You begin to root for a child to give his teachers or parents a taste of their own treacle by turning around to them and saying (in the same saccharine tone of voice), “Good praising!”

Still, it’s not an easy habit to break. It can seem strange, at least at first, to stop praising; it can feel as though you’re being chilly or withholding something. But that, it soon becomes clear, suggests that we praise more because we need to say it than because children need to hear it. Whenever that’s true, it’s time to rethink what we’re doing.

I see several problems with the “good girl” approach. Firstly it’s the way the phrase is standardised and becomes an almost mechanical response. To me it means that you’ve let your praise become routine, an automatic response. You may care about what your child did, but you’re certainly not showing your interest particularly well. “Good girl” feels, well, impersonal. It’s like handing out mass-produced store-bought candy instead of a home-made cookie. There is no real connection. Robin Grille puts it well in Rewards and Praise: The Poisoned Carrot:

When giving a positive comment, are you trying to seduce the child into pleasing you again, into making Mama or Papa proud? Or are you genuinely glad to see the child accomplish something that pleases him, or genuinely delighting in her being? Therein lies a paradox: that which is not intended to reinforce, but merely to “connect”, is the most reinforcing.

“Good girl” is also not helping the child understand what she did well, or why it was good. I’d much rather say “Thank you for giving the spoon back to me” (instead of throwing it on the floor) or “Yes, let’s put the socks back in the drawer, nice and tidy!”

But what I like least about “good girl” is how it is used to praise achivements that don’t need to be praised, and shouldn’t be praised. The best reward for learning something new, or doing something fun – running, jumping, climbing, throwing a ball – is the joy of doing it, not being praised by someone else. Praise turns play into work. Something that was simply fun is now being judged as good (on some sort of scale). If you’re a “good girl” for taking your first steps, does not walking make you bad?

(The English “good girl” is the most egregious example, because of the immensely loaded word “good” in it. The Swedish “duktig” and Estonian “tubli” are somewhat less judgmental, but still mean that the child is being evaluated and praised for living up to parents’ hopes and expectations.)

Earlier this week I went to a toddler play room with Ingrid. Two other small girls were running and climbing around – the younger one about 2 years old, the older maybe 3 or 4. The little girl climbed all the way to the top of a big slide, and immediately I heard her older sister say “good girl” with that special sugary tone that parents use, obviously learned from hearing it many many times from their mum. Already at the age of 3, she had learned to respond with canned praise rather than shared joy… I found that quite sad.

If I had any doubt about this at all, if I felt the least bit tempted to call Ingrid a good girl, my golden rule (“As above, so below”) would dispel the last of my doubts. You wouldn’t do so to an adult, so why do you think it’s OK to do so to a child? Would you say “good girl” to your wife, other than as a joke? Would you want to hear “good job” after you’ve proudly managed to make your way down the slope on a snowboard for the first time? Personally I’d feel rather insulted.