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In recent years, our parenting culture began to send the message that competence was important for building self-esteem and that parents needed to do everything they can to convince their children how competent they were. All very reasonable, to be sure. However, that same parenting culture made a big mistake by telling parents that the way to instill competence in their children was to tell them how competent they were. Parents bought into this message and starting telling their children how smart and talented and wonderful they were. But here's the problem. Children can't be convinced that they are competent. 近几年，我们的教养文化开始传达这样的信息：能力对树立自尊很重要，父母应该尽其所能使他们的孩子相信他们是多么有能力。可以肯定的是，所有的这些都很合理。然而，同样的教养文化通过给孩子们灌输他们是多么有能力的方式犯了个大错误。父母们输入了这样的信息，并且开始告诉他们的孩子他们是多么聪明，多么有天赋，多么棒。但是这里有一个问题，孩子们不能被说服相信他们是有能力的。 When parents try to convince their children of how competent they are, they often have the exact opposite effect. There is this little thing called reality that children have to confront on a daily basis; life has a way of sending messages about competence that can be in sharp contrast to the outsized messages of competence that parents send their children. When children are faced with the conflict between what their parents had told them about how good they are and what reality is telling them, the result is the bursting of the “You are the best” bubble that their parents blew up for them. The result: disappointment, hurt, and an actual loss of sense of competence. Let me be clear here: The only way for children to build a true sense of competence is through first-hand experience that includes travails, triumphs, struggles, setbacks, and successes. | 
