Good for you! Are you reading this article all by yourself? With no help at all? Wow, I’m just so proud of you for reading this article. Great job!

Cringing at how familiar that sounds? Maybe you have a tendency to be a “good job!” praiser. It’s a comment that’s easily tossed about, but also one which experts say holds very little weight with children. “Comments like that really aren’t helpful to children,” says Jennifer Kolari, a Toronto-based child and family therapist. “And in this age range, it’s important to learn to praise appropriately.” Take heart that there are ways to structure praise so that your child will value it — yet not become dependent on it.

Is praising a problem?

It’s not generally. But how we praise can be. “The biggest mistake parents make today is praising too much,” says Kolari. “So there’s either too much praise, or it’s not genuine, or children are being praised for ordinary behaviours.” Many parents fall into these traps, she believes, in an effort to build their child’s self-esteem and avoid exposing their children to situations where they won’t be happy. But this kind of praise carries the risk of actually undermining your efforts. “Studies show that too much praise and extensive praise can contribute to making children underachieve and have an unrealistic sense of themselves, or an inflated sense of self-esteem,” says Kolari.

So how can we revise the way we praise? Here are some suggestions from Alfie Kohn, author of Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason (Atria Books).

1. Don’t praise at all. Huh? Sounds like it’s against a parent’s nature, doesn’t it? “But sometimes, it’s just enough for children to see you watching,” says Kohn. “Our assumption is that we have to give them reinforcement for everything and it’s based on a cynical view of children. It’s as if we believe if they did something nice, it must have been a fluke and they need an artificial reason to do it again.”

2. Use “I Noticed” More. Rather than saying “nice painting!,” try, “I noticed that you used mostly bright colours in your picture,” because it shows children that you’ve paid close attention to what they’re doing. “And it gives children the kind of encouragement that really doesn’t require judgment at all,” says Kohn. “This way you let them know that you saw, that you cared, and let them decide whether they want to feel proud of themselves.”

3. Try asking questions. This is what Natasha Clark, a Red Deer, Alta.-based mom of four does. “When my children do a craft or something like that, I try to ask things like “Do you really like that painting? Is this one really special to you?” she says. “I do it to try and get a better feeling about what they’ve done or how they feel about themselves, and I think it prompts them to be more introspective.”

That’s exactly what asking questions does for children, notes Kohn. “These questions pull kids into what they’re doing and help them think about it, as opposed to praising them, which pulls them out of the task and into our faces. Then the point is to get approval,” he says.

In the end, rethinking the way you praise your children shapes the adults they’re going to be. “So much of praise is really used to get kids to do what we want — I call them “verbal doggie biscuits,” says Kohn. “We have to remember what matters most is how the child experiences our comments, not just what we intend by them.”

Astrid Van Den Broek has almost kicked her habit of uttering “good job” all the time to her three-year-old daughter.