I have been sharing information on the importance of encouragement with young children for nearly 20 years. Some Early Childhood Education instructors might call it “process-praise” or “effort-based praise.”

In the ECE classes I teach, we practice how to encourage children, learn to identify empty praise, and study the research behind best practice. We know that encouragement fosters intrinsic motivation and a sense of self-approval.

It is rare to hear a “good job” in my preschool program, unless it slips from the mouths of children acknowledging one another, like they so often have been recognized outside of school.

I’ve also been known to use “encouraging language” with my spouse, but it’s not always a huge success. But the problem could lie in the sarcastic tone I don’t use with young learners. “I see you emptied the dishwasher.” “It looks like you paid the bills.” Somehow this is not as effective…

I enrolled in a botanical illustration course through our local community college – four nights and I’ll learn to illustrate nature! Class started off with copying basic shapes and working on shading with HB pencils. Then came illustrating peppers. I don’t even like peppers, which likely put me in a mood.

The instructor went around the room, commenting on people’s work, guiding them toward improvement, and telling some of the students “good job.” Note some meant not me. I am under no false assumptions that I am a gifted artist, but I wanted MY “good job.”

I looked around the room sheepishly trying to determine WHO was doing such great work. What did it look like? What did the instructor like about it? I no longer even liked this person who I still hadn’t identified, this botanical illustration protégée.

In addition, I doubted my skills (consistent with the research on praise), which I wasn’t feeling confident in from the beginning. Why aren’t I a ‘good’ artist? Why do I suck at illustrating peppers? I would have loved a, “You’re working hard on your pepper” or a “I see you have made multiple shades with your pencil.”

And this is how young children feel when we offer their siblings and peers empty praise. When teachers tell their classroom of unfocused preschoolers, “I like the way Moe is sitting.” It’s not about Moe! It’s about everyone else who needs to get their shit together and do what Moe is doing. And Moe is singled out, and may feel good in the short-term, but in the long-term, she’ll just want to blend in. And Moe’s classmates? Not a fan of this brown-nosing, rule follower. These techniques may ‘work’ on 3-year-olds who care about pleasing adults, but try this technique with older students… Or a 40-something-year-old preschool teacher in art class. It doesn’t work.

I was sitting on the floor in our dramatic play area of the classroom. It was set up as a fire station, and four children were working together in the fire truck in various states of dress – helmets, goggles, fire coats, etc…

Child A declared, “You have to put the helmet on before your goggles. Does everyone have gloves?” He then grabbed some gloves to distribute to his peers – “Take any gloves you want.”

I watched as he distributed gloves and Child B ended up with a pair of gloves that were much too small. He declared (after a peer asked for help with the steering wheel), “I’ll fix it after I put these stupid gloves on.”

My first instinct was two-fold – talk about the word ‘stupid’ and get him some bigger gloves from the storage closet. But I did none of those of things… I sat, waited, and observed.

The two children worked together trying to get the gloves on Child B. Child A went looking for different gloves, but it’s the Spring before kindergarten and they’ve outgrown so many things.

Child B asked the group, “Can someone help me put my other glove on? Who’s gonna help me put my other glove on?”

Child A concluded, “It doesn’t matter. Some firemans have only one glove. In fact, one day skiing, my glove fell off the ski lift.”

And play continued and that particular firefighter happily had only one glove.

Because of those “stupid gloves” and my sitting back and observing, these children worked on:

• Problem-solving
• Persevering through a difficult task
• Using words to get needs met
• Understanding measurement and comparison
• Peer connections
• Flexibility in thought
• Working with frustration and disappointment

What other developmental tasks did you observe?

The play had been ‘chasing the bad guys’ all morning; rife with shooting, shoving, playing dead, etc… While making the supervising adults feel uncomfortable, for the most part it was cooperative. Someone would shout, “pause the game” and everyone would stop and listen. One child volunteered to be the ‘bad guy’ and everyone ran after him. Once captured, he would be ‘dead,’ and they would drag his limp body into the dome climber jail.

After a bit, the play moved to the sandbox where we had Breyer horses, people, shovels, and buckets. The same group of children worked on burying a black stallion in the sand. “The black horse is the bad guy!” Not one to intervene in play, but more motivated to find out more, I inquired, “I wonder why the black horse is the bad guy…”

“Because he’s Black!” Another peer replied, “All bad guys are Black!”

My little feminist heart crumpled… My minor in graduate school was women studies – I know about the intersection of race, gender, socioeconomic status, ability, sexual orientation, ability, etc… One of the pillars of our progressive preschool is an ‘anti-bias multicultural educational’ approach. I am intentional about the books we bring into our screen-free classroom, the wall displays, the skin tones of our baby dolls, and the use of mindful and socially aware language.

How could a child in my preschool declare that all bad guys are Black?!?

Initial horror aside, it’s time to reflect… What images are children exposed to on a daily basis? Where do those images originate? Who is doing the socializing and what interest do they have in creating socially aware and compassionate human beings?

I think back  to the story of Swimmy by Leo Leonni. The little fish all work together to scare away the big, black fish. In the end, they are successful and the evil fish swims away “scared, lonely, & very sad.”  In How to Train Your Dragon II, the cast is all White with the exception of the dark-skinned villain.  In old western films, the good guys wear the white cowboy (or cow-person, if you use gender-neutral language) hats and the bad guys wear the black hats.

What can I do? What can we do?

We live in a community that was over 91% White in our last Census, with African Americans comprising less than 0.5% of our population. Yes, that is less than ONE percent! Likely, the children in my program don’t see any real-live people who are Black on a regular basis. When they do, who are the Black people they see? Who has dark skin? The women cleaning their hotel rooms in Palm Springs? The taxi driver in Mexico? The person pushing a shopping cart at the freeway off-ramp on their trip to the big city? The man playing football on the TV? The ‘bad guy’ in their shows, games, and books?

Yes, our tan, tawny, terra cotta, and mahogany dolls outnumber our peach dolls. Our wall visuals represent people of varying races, abilities, faiths, genders, and relationships. We use person-first language (i.e., The person who was Black vs. the Black man). But there have been so few opportunities in their short 60 months on Earth to challenge those naïve assumptions that “all bad guys are Black.”

We need to ask questions without judgement… We need to provide children with a culturally rich environment that does not appropriate or tokenize the very people we claim to be studying or exploring… We need to not shut down their developmentally appropriate musings with, “that’s not nice!” We need to explore and listen and provide alternatives… Because as their parents, educators, and care providers, we have the power to be a greater socializer than the media. Because not all bad guys are Black and not all guys are bad… Sometimes there are just people who make poor choices… Let’s not add ourselves to that list in avoiding the tough work of cultivating open, aware, and compassionate human beings.