At the last gymnastics meet I brought my two daughters to, they hit the jackpot, receiving a total of eight gold medals and two large trophies.

Lest you think I’ve got the next Shannon Miller living under my roof, I’ll confess that all the participants got a gold medal (well, plastic) for each of the four events at the meet, and a trophy for good measure. Just for showing up.

The girls were ranked at this meet according to their all-around score on the events. The little gymnasts took their place on the podium—first, second, third … and fourth, and fifth, and sixth, all the way down to 20th or more. (Seriously: “And, in 20th place, McKaitlynn van Harris-Nelson!”) But there were several “first” place winners, because they were grouped by age: 6, 6½, 7, 7½, 8, 8½—you get the idea.

It reminded me of a recent high school graduation I attended where there were 14 “valedictorians” and 17 “salutatorians.”

Sigh. Such is life in America today. We treat our children’s self-esteem like it is so fragile it will perish if not put in intensive care on a feeding tube of sugary you’re-the-best messages.

At what point did we decide it was necessary for every child to leave every sporting event feeling like they’ve had a Michael-Phelps-scale triumph?

“[A] flattering mouth worketh ruin,” says Proverbs 26:28. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than with our children.

I recently read about an interesting set of experiments conducted in the 1990s. Four hundred 10-to-12-year-olds from a variety of backgrounds were given an intelligence test where they had to deduce and predict patterns among sets of various shapes. When they finished, the experimenters told all of them, regardless of their performance, that they had done really well, getting 80 percent of the puzzles right. But then, the twist. One third of the children received no other feedback. Another third was encouraged with one sentence of praise, saying, essentially: You must have tried very hard to have received such a good score. The final third was flattered with one sentence saying: Wow—to have done so well, you must be really smart! This is basically what parents and educators are told to tell our kids all the time, no?

What do you suppose happened?

These same children were then given a choice between two further tasks: One task, they were told, would be tough, and they might not succeed—but they would still learn something from it even if they failed; the other task was easy, and they’d probably succeed at it but learn little. Get this: The children who had been flattered chose the easy taskfar more than those who hadn’t.

Tell a kid he’s intelligent, and suddenly he wants to avoid a challenge and to just stick to the easy stuff.

The experimenters then gave these same children another set of puzzles, far harder than the first, and most of the children did poorly. Interviews afterward revealed that the flattered children (keep in mind—they had only heard a single sentence praising their intellect) enjoyed the difficult puzzles far less than the other children, and were much less likely to want to do more of them in the future.

Tell a kid he’s unusually bright, and suddenly he finds much less pleasure in taking on a difficult task.

All the children were then told to tell their classmates how they had done on the difficult test. Get this: Nearly 40 percent of the flattered children lied about their grade—almost four times as many as the other children.

Tell a kid he’s smart, and suddenly he becomes far likelier to bluff about his achievements.

Finally, these children were given a third test, just as easy as the first. What happened? Though the children had all scored about the same the first time, this time the flattered children had far lower scores than their peers!

Tell a kid he’s a brain, and then when he fails, he loses his motivation and feels helpless!

But guess what? The children who had been praised for their effort actually performed best of all. Where only 45 percent of the flattered kids chose the difficult task over the easy one, and 65 percent of those who had been told nothing—90 percent of those who had been given one sentence of encouragement went the hard route! The encouraged children also found the difficult test more enjoyable, and were much more likely to want to do more such challenges. And when given a test comparable to the first, they performed significantly better than they had the first time!

All because of one sentence of the right kind of praise.

The lesson? Wrong praise can devastate a child’s motivation. Stay away from lauding him or her for some supposed innate ability—you’re so smart, you’re so talented. Such statements are a trap. “A man that flattereth his neighbour [or his child] spreadeth a net for his feet” (Proverbs 29:5).

But praising a child for his effort can really encourage him to stretch himself, to work hard—and, when the going gets tough, to keep at it.

When your child participates in something, don’t strangle his neck with cheap medals and slap a plastic trophy in his hand. Don’t talk to him like he’s a natural-born Olympian. Look for effort. And when you see that, encourage it. When he brings home a good grade, talk about how it reflects fine work, solid study habits, concentration under pressure. When he scores an athletic success, praise his diligence, or teamwork, or tenacity in the face of a challenge. Make it specific, and keep it honest.