While praising children for the right thing is important, I don't think that the emphasis should be on praise.<p>It is much more important that parents make a conscious effort to see the children, try to gauge their emotions, and reflect that in words.<p>In the book "Your Competent Child" (I can highly recommend that to all parents), Jesper Juul gives an example. A child manages to climb up the back side of a slide, and then calls "look, ma!". Now many parents have the urge to say "Wow, you did that really well", and thus give a reward for the child's hard work.<p>But climbing up was fun (even if it was also hard work), and by giving a reward we teach the child to crave the reward, not the fun. Instead, one could just say "Yes, I'm looking", or trying to understand the child better, say "Yes, I'm looking. Did you have fun climbing up? And now maybe you're just a tiny bit scared sliding down?".<p>By simply observing the children, and making it clear that we do, we give value to children themselves, not their intelligence, and not their effort either. IMHO that's a much higher goal.<p>If at some point their motivation fails, they still feel they have value.<p>Once again, for anybody who wants to take children seriously, I highly recommend to read Jesper Juul's books. They were a real eye-opener to me.