--You can have informative positive commentary, where it happens to be positive but the main focus is on the information contained. Example: talking about how Marissa finds math intuitive in order to talk about what this might be used for, or how others do not find it similarly intuitive so adjusting expectations.
--You can have positive critique, where you're looking to have the other person act on the positive information in particular ways, such as "keep this section, this section is really working."
--You can have praise, where you just want to express the positive thing fairly purely without necessarily needing it to be integrated into an action item related either to another thing or to itself. "This poem is really good" might lead the other person to write more poetry, write more poetry of that type, write more in some form on that topic, etc. But that's not why you're saying it or how you're saying it, you're saying it for the pure joy of "wow, good thing here, I point at it." Which is a good thing to do! They're all good things to do!
And they do overlap. But I think that having some of each kind and not confusing them all for each other works better. It's really nice to hear, "Thank you for making supper, it's very good!" It's also useful to hear, "I really like what you made for supper, can you make it again? and/or incorporate some of the technique from it into other thing you make?" And it's also interesting to have someone say, "I really like this thing you made for supper, can we talk about how you did it? I don't see how it works, and I'd like to." But they're not the same.
When we're talking about how to praise small children, I feel like most of the examples ("You're really good at this!" AND "You must have worked really hard on this!") are the third kind. Hardly any of them go further with the conversation or seem inclined to have another purpose. And so they end up being treated as alternatives to each other with no thought to the other purposes a conversation about this sort of thing could have.
As a small child I got treated as a collaborative partner a lot, and I was encouraged to treat my parents as collaborative partners as well. I did get praised ("You did a great job at the piano recital, sweetie") but I also got the other two kinds of positive commentary, and I think that was great, it gave a positive and useful range of interaction. But also I think that it did more than just straight-up praising effort in the direction of me treating my work as, well, my work. Something I could work on and think about.
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--You can have informative positive commentary, where it happens to be positive but the main focus is on the information contained. Example: talking about how Marissa finds math intuitive in order to talk about what this might be used for, or how others do not find it similarly intuitive so adjusting expectations.
--You can have positive critique, where you're looking to have the other person act on the positive information in particular ways, such as "keep this section, this section is really working."
--You can have praise, where you just want to express the positive thing fairly purely without necessarily needing it to be integrated into an action item related either to another thing or to itself. "This poem is really good" might lead the other person to write more poetry, write more poetry of that type, write more in some form on that topic, etc. But that's not why you're saying it or how you're saying it, you're saying it for the pure joy of "wow, good thing here, I point at it." Which is a good thing to do! They're all good things to do!
And they do overlap. But I think that having some of each kind and not confusing them all for each other works better. It's really nice to hear, "Thank you for making supper, it's very good!" It's also useful to hear, "I really like what you made for supper, can you make it again? and/or incorporate some of the technique from it into other thing you make?" And it's also interesting to have someone say, "I really like this thing you made for supper, can we talk about how you did it? I don't see how it works, and I'd like to." But they're not the same.
When we're talking about how to praise small children, I feel like most of the examples ("You're really good at this!" AND "You must have worked really hard on this!") are the third kind. Hardly any of them go further with the conversation or seem inclined to have another purpose. And so they end up being treated as alternatives to each other with no thought to the other purposes a conversation about this sort of thing could have.
As a small child I got treated as a collaborative partner a lot, and I was encouraged to treat my parents as collaborative partners as well. I did get praised ("You did a great job at the piano recital, sweetie") but I also got the other two kinds of positive commentary, and I think that was great, it gave a positive and useful range of interaction. But also I think that it did more than just straight-up praising effort in the direction of me treating my work as, well, my work. Something I could work on and think about.