Praising kids for the right reasons

I love research or opinions that are unconventional, but which upon reflection make a lot of sense.  I ran across one such work of educational research that I shared via email last week to every staff member of my school.  The piece is entitled, "The Praise Paradox," and it resonated with a great many of my colleagues.  The authors posit that habitually praising children for being "smart" (even if they really are smart) sets them up for trouble down the line.  Instead, as parents and teachers we ought to applaud children for effort:

“Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

There's real insight in this work, and I find myself interacting with my own children at home in a different manner as a result.