Too Much Empty Praise? How Parents and Teachers Can Cut Through the “Glaze”
It was writer’s workshop in my son’s second-grade classroom. The smell of glue sticks and wiped-down tables still reminds me of those Tuesday mornings when I came in to help. A girl named Zoe had just finished a three-page story about a lost cat. She brought it to the student teacher, who leaned back, eyes wide, and said, “Zoe, this is amazing! You are such a good writer.”
Zoe smiled so hard her cheeks lifted. Then the student teacher added, “Maybe you could add one detail on this page.”
Zoe’s face changed. She stared at the paper for a long moment and walked back to her seat. A few minutes later, I found her crumpling the edges of the page.
“I don’t want to fix it,” she said. “It’s already amazing.”
I knew what she meant. If the paper was already perfect, adding anything could only ruin it.
That same week, my son Leo brought home a crayon drawing of a rocket. I was halfway through loading the dishwasher, and I said the sentence I say too often: “Wow, buddy, that’s awesome.”
He kept holding the paper. “You say that to everything.”
He wasn’t being rude. He was seven, and he had noticed something I had been too busy to see: I was coating his work in glaze.
By glaze, I mean that shiny layer of automatic praise adults spread over ordinary childhood effort: Perfect! Amazing! The best one ever! You’re such a little artist! It comes from affection. We want children to feel proud, capable, and seen. But when praise is too quick, too big, and disconnected from what the child actually did, it stops being useful. It becomes noise.
Zoe’s story was not amazing because she had spelled half the words phonetically and the plot ended with the cat simply walking home. It was a strong, interesting second-grade story. But after “amazing,” there was nowhere to go. She could not receive a small suggestion without feeling that she had fallen from “good writer” to “not good enough.”
Leo’s rocket drawing was also perfectly ordinary in the best sense: red flames, one crooked fin, a control panel covered in buttons. My “awesome” told him nothing. He could not tell whether I had looked at the rocket, the buttons, or just the fact that he had handed me paper.
Children are constantly trying to figure out how their work measures up. They need warm attention, but they also need honest, specific information. Glaze gives them a reflection of our approval instead of a clear view of their own effort.
I started changing my language in small ways. When Leo handed me a drawing, I tried to name one actual thing I noticed.
“That rocket has four different kinds of buttons,” I said one evening. “What does this blue one do?”
He talked for five minutes about the booster shield. No “great job” was needed. My attention told him I had really looked.
At school, I began using the same approach with writing. Instead of “great story,” I would say, “I can picture the cat sitting under the bush because you wrote its tail was shaking.” If a child asked, “Is it good?” I often turned the question back: “What part do you think works best?” Sometimes they answered immediately. Other times they shrugged, but they usually looked back at the page and actually read it.
This matters because children need to learn to judge their own work. If every paper is “amazing,” they have to keep looking to adults for the final verdict. They may become afraid of correction, because correction feels like a verdict on who they are rather than information about what they made.
I am not suggesting adults become cold critics. Children do not need a list of flaws after every drawing. Most of the time, they do not need evaluation at all. They need a witness. A simple “I saw how long you worked on that” or “Tell me about this part” is often enough.
When feedback is necessary, I keep it small and tied to the work. In the classroom, I might say, “Your beginning made me wonder where the cat went. One thing you could try is showing what the cat ate.” At home, if Leo asked whether his block tower looked good, I might say, “The base looks wide, but the top is leaning. What could make it steadier?” That is honest without being deflating.
I also stopped praising fixed traits. “You’re so smart” can make a child avoid harder tasks, because struggling might mean the label is wrong. “You kept trying different pieces until that puzzle fit” points to something the child can control. It does not sound like a speech. It sounds like noticing.
Some of the heaviest glaze comes from well-meaning relatives or classroom volunteers. I have learned not to correct them in the moment. Later, I might model a more specific response: “Look at the way she made the rain boots purple. Did you choose that because they’re your boots?” If a grandparent says, “He’s going to be an engineer,” I might smile and add, “He did spend about twenty minutes figuring out why the ramp kept falling.” That turns the compliment back toward effort without starting a lecture about praise.
Environmental changes help too. At home, we stopped putting every paper on the refrigerator. Some drawings went in a folder, some went in the recycling, and Leo chose one special piece when he wanted to display something. That sounds minor, but it sent a quiet message: not everything has to be a masterpiece. At school, the teacher sometimes displayed drafts alongside final pieces. Children could see that finished work usually starts messy, gets crossed out, and improves through changes.
The hardest moment came when Leo made a birthday card for his grandmother and asked, “Is this beautiful?”
I looked at it. The letters were uneven, and the flower had six petals. “I think it’s beautiful because you made it for her,” I said. “But I also think she’s going to notice that you wrote her name by yourself.”
He considered that. “It’s not perfect, though.”
“Most things aren’t,” I said.
He nodded and put the card in an envelope.
We are several months into this, and I still catch myself saying “awesome” or “perfect” when I am tired or distracted. Last week Leo built a complicated marble run and ran to get me. I almost said it before I even saw the structure. Then I knelt down and watched a marble travel through two funnels and a crooked tube.
“That one turn made it slow down,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I had to tape it three times.”
He did not ask whether he was a great builder. He just picked up another marble and tried again. Some days that feels like progress. Other days I wonder whether I am giving him enough encouragement, or whether the glaze was serving a purpose I cannot see. But when I watch him revise a drawing without crumpling it, or explain a mistake instead of waiting for praise, I think the clearer view is worth the extra effort.
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