November 4, 2025 • 15 mins
It all started with a gold star. A single shining sticker on a kindergarten chart that—without me realizing it—began rewiring my understanding of love, worth, and motivation. In this episode of The Whole Parent Podcast, we dive into the hidden cost of praise—why “good job” might be doing more harm than good, and how something as innocent as a sticker chart can turn play into performance.
Drawing on groundbreaking research from psychologists like Edward Deci and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, I unravel how extrinsic rewards shift our kids’ focus from curiosity to compliance…and why this shift often leaves adults feeling hollow, disconnected, and trapped in perfection.
Through personal stories and parenting insights (including an unforgettable block tower moment with my son), we explore what happens when we stop praising kids for performing and start truly seeing them instead. If you've ever wondered whether we’re raising children who chase approval instead of wonder, this episode is for you.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why praise can undermine confidence and creativity
- The difference between being seen and being evaluated
- How to encourage intrinsic motivation in your kids—and yourself
- A new language of love that sounds nothing like “good job”
Let’s trade gold stars for presence—and rediscover the quiet magic of being enough, just as we are.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:04):
It started with a gold star.
A single shimmering sticker on aconstruction paper chart in my
kindergarten classroom.
I don't remember the assignment.
I don't remember what I drew orsaid or built.
I just remember the star.
How it glowed.
There's a picture of me fromthat week.
(00:26):
Five years old, Dragon Ball Zbackpack, missing front tooth.
For reference, I knocked it outon the back of my older
brother's head at the pool wheremy cousin was lifeguard.
I'm grinning with my hand onthat chart, like I had just
discovered buried treasure.
My mom had written on the back,he's so proud of himself.
But thinking back now, I'mactually not sure I was proud of
(00:49):
myself.
I was proud of the star.
That's the thing about goldstars.
They sparkle just long enough toblind you to the differences
between joy and approval.
We praise children to buildtheir confidence.
We reward them to keep themmotivated.
We raise them in a world wheregood job is practically
(01:09):
punctuation.
But here's the paradox.
The more we praise, the morefragile that confidence seems to
become.
Psychologists like Edward Desiand Richard Ryan noticed this
decades ago.
Praise, they said, doesn'talways inspire.
In fact, it can control.
It shifts a child's attentionfrom doing to being seen doing.
(01:34):
And once approval becomes thegoal, authenticity begins to
fracture.
So today, I want to explore aquestion that's haunted me for
years.
When did we start mistakingvalidation for love?
And what happens to a person, toa culture, when praise replaces
presence?
(01:54):
Come along for the journey.
This is the whole parentpodcast.
A few months ago, I found myselfwatching my three-year-old son
try to build a tower of blocks.
This kid is usually the oneknocking down towers, not
building them.
Yet on that day, he was stackingthem carefully.
(02:15):
Wobbling, grinning, falling, andthen trying again.
I opened my mouth to say, Goodjob, buddy.
But then I stopped.
He wasn't asking for praise.
He wasn't asking for anything.
He was totally absorbed, lost inthe rhythm of his play.
In that moment, I thought ofAlfie Cohn.
(02:35):
He's been on the podcast.
And he wrote that praise isoften judgment wrapped in sugar.
We think of it as encouragement,but it's actually evaluation in
disguise.
It teaches a child not just whatwe value, but whose valuation
matters the most.
In other words, good job soundsharmless, but said too much, or
(02:58):
when unnecessary, it subtlyconditions dependence.
I began to see it everywhere inclassrooms, offices, Instagram
feeds.
The world is built on theselittle gold stars now.
Take, for example, this strangeexperiment from the 1970s.
Maybe you've heard me talk aboutit before.
It's one of my favorites.
(03:20):
Researchers go into a preschoolclassroom armed with felt tip
markers, and at first they justlay them out to see which kids
are going to use them fordrawing, for coloring, whatever.
Once they find all the kids thatreally seem to enjoy it, they
separated them into threegroups.
They took the markers away, andwhen they brought them back,
they told one group, You aregoing to be given a reward if
(03:43):
you use these markers, if youdraw with them.
It's going to be a fancycertificate with a gold seal,
and your name is going to be putup on the board.
The Good Students Club.
The other two groups weren'ttold about any reward.
Some of them got a reward, someof them didn't.
When that phase of theexperiment was over and the
rewards were handed out,actually everybody was happy.
(04:06):
But here's what happened next.
The children who expected to geta reward, the kids from that
first group, they stoppeddrawing when the markers came
back after the experiment wasquote unquote over.
This activity that had once justbeen play for them had now
become work.
The joy that they had fromsimply using the markers had
(04:28):
become a transaction.
The kids who didn't get areward, they kept using the
markers.
In fact, when researchers lookedat the pictures drawn by the
first group, the group that knewthat they were going to get a
reward, and all of the otherkids, they found something
astounding.
Even the quality was different.
The kids who drew just for thelove of drawing had produced
(04:50):
objectively better pictures.
That small moment in a preschoolart corner was a window into
something enormous.
Because as it turns out,motivation at all ages is
extremely fragile.
It's like a campfire.
Add a couple of logs to it, andit'll burn brighter.
(05:12):
Provide more warmth.
But add too much fuel and it'llburn itself out entirely.
(06:55):
Around this time, in a differentcorner of the world, a young
psychologist named MihaliChiksemihali was studying what
he called flow, the deep stateof immersion that comes when
time disappears and you forgetyourself completely.
Artists know it, athletes feelit, even monks in silent prayer
(07:17):
describe it.
But what fascinated ChicksaMihali was what killed flow.
It was external evaluation.
The moment that you notice thatsomeone is watching, or worse,
judging, the spell breaks.
In other words, praiseinterrupts that present moment.
And presence, that's thebirthplace of meaning.
(07:40):
Which makes me wonder.
If praise disrupts presence,then maybe the opposite of love
isn't actually criticism.
Maybe it's evaluation.
That's the twist that most of usmiss.
We think that praise is an actof love, the opposite of
judgment, when often it's justjudgment with better lighting.
When we say good boy, what wereally mean is you're lovable
(08:04):
when you make me happy.
That subtle distinction betweenI love you and I approve of you
becomes the architecture of alifetime.
It's why grown adults, peoplelike me, still measure their
worth in promotions and likesand applause.
It's why so many high achieversstill feel empty.
Because somewhere along the way,their sense of value got
(08:26):
outsourced.
Rewards, in a sense, are a formof modern control.
They feel like progress, thegrade, the raise, the pat on the
back.
But they're really just upgradedobedience.
The carrot replaces the stick,but the leash, it stays on.
You can see it in schools.
A generation raised on stickersand honor rolls grows into one
(08:49):
that's hooked on metrics andperformance reviews.
The gold stars becomes a resume.
The chart becomes an algorithm.
And we all learn in subtle waysto trade our curiosity for
compliance.
Even our moral education isbuilt this way.
We teach our children to do theright thing and then hand out
prizes when they do.
(09:10):
But morality withoutinternalization is just
manipulation.
We've replaced conscience withconditioning and then wondered
why empathy feels endangered.
It's not that praise is bad.
It's that it's too easy.
It's cheap.
It's not real connection.
It gives us the illusion ofconnection without the substance
(09:31):
of understanding.
When I think about my ownchildhood, I can trace this
thread like a faint scar.
After I began to manage my ADHD,I became one of those good kids,
a rule follower, the one whonever got in trouble.
My teachers loved me, adults inmy life trusted me, but I
realized now I wasn't beingmyself.
(09:51):
I was just performing goodness.
And there's a loneliness tothat.
The loneliness of theextrinsically motivated person.
Because when your worth dependson applause, or likes, or
followers, silence feels likerejection.
Even my success became hollow.
You hit the mark, but thesatisfaction evaporates almost
(10:14):
instantly.
You start chasing the nextthing, the next star, the next
like, the next nod from someonewhose approval you've confused
for love.
And all the while, your truedesires grow a little bit
quieter.
Until one day you realize you'renot even sure what you want
anymore.
(10:34):
This isn't new.
In ancient Rome, soldiers weregiven coins stamped with the
emperor's face as a reward forbravery.
Those coins weren't justcurrency, they were loyalty
tokens.
Proof of worth bestowed fromabove.
We haven't changed much, havewe?
The Emperor just got rebranded.
(10:55):
He's an algorithm now.
If you zoom out far enough,extrinsic motivation isn't just
a psychological issue, it's aspiritual one.
It reflects the deeper humanfear that without proof of
value, we might not really haveany.
But here's the quiet act ofrebellion.
To live from intrinsicmotivation, to act from
(11:17):
curiosity or wonder or love, isto trust that simply being is
enough.
It's to plant a seed withoutneeding a witness.
The good news is every childbegins this way.
We don't need to do anything asparents.
They don't paint for praise orsing for approval.
(11:38):
They build and they imaginebecause the world is fascinating
and life itself is innovation.
Our job as parents, or teachers,or humans in general, isn't to
instill motivation.
It's to protect it.
A few nights ago, I watched myson again.
(11:59):
Same blocks, same small handsstacking.
When he finally built the towertaller than himself, unlike me
at his age, he didn't look at mefor approval.
He just screamed in triumph,that pure, round, kind of joyous
hurrah that only comes from theinside out.
I sat there in the quiet,realizing he didn't need me to
(12:23):
say good job.
He just needed me to see him forwho he is.
That's what praise tries andfails to imitate.
The deep, wordless knowing ofbeing witnessed, not evaluated.
Maybe the point isn't to stoppraising altogether.
(12:44):
Maybe it's that we need to learnhow to praise differently.
We need to learn how toencourage rather than evaluate.
Not you're so smart, but youworked so hard.
Not you're so good, but I lovewatching you try.
Not a good job, but I see you.
(13:07):
We can't gold star our way backto wonder.
But maybe we can notice when itappears, unprompted, unmeasured,
for free.
Because love, the real kind,doesn't sound like a job.
Sometimes it sounds likesilence, held open long enough
for a child or an adult to heartheir own heartbeat and believe
(13:31):
that it's enough.
(14:03):
Just scroll down on your podcastapp, tap those stars, and if
you've got an extra 30 seconds,leave a couple words for me to
let me know how this podcast hasbeen helping you.
I read every single review.
It really means the world to me.
Number two, after you rate itand review it for the masses, I
really want to encourage you tothink about what we talked about
in this episode and send it toone parent in your phone who you
(14:23):
feel like might benefit fromthis specific episode.
It's great to have ratings andreviews, and yes, they help so
much, but there's nothing like apersonal recommendation from a
friend, hey, you gotta listen tothis.
It's really been helping me.
Last, if you want to go deeperwith me, get exclusive parenting
insights, free resources, andupdates on everything that I'm
doing, go ahead and join myemail list.
(14:45):
It's where I share things that Idon't get to get into on the
podcast.
I also will let you know aboutupcoming episodes and events,
and best of all, it's completelyfree.
You can sign up atwholeparentacademy.com or just
go to the show notes below andthere'll be a link there.
All right, that's it for now.
Thanks again for listening, andthank you in advance for doing
those three quick favors for me.
This has been the Whole ParentPodcast.
It started with a gold star.
A single shimmering sticker on aconstruction paper chart in my
kindergarten classroom.
I don't remember the assignment.
I don't remember what I drew orsaid or built.
I just remember the star.
How it glowed.
There's a picture of me fromthat week.
(00:26):
Five years old, Dragon Ball Zbackpack, missing front tooth.
For reference, I knocked it outon the back of my older
brother's head at the pool wheremy cousin was lifeguard.
I'm grinning with my hand onthat chart, like I had just
discovered buried treasure.
My mom had written on the back,he's so proud of himself.
But thinking back now, I'mactually not sure I was proud of
(00:49):
myself.
I was proud of the star.
That's the thing about goldstars.
They sparkle just long enough toblind you to the differences
between joy and approval.
We praise children to buildtheir confidence.
We reward them to keep themmotivated.
We raise them in a world wheregood job is practically
(01:09):
punctuation.
But here's the paradox.
The more we praise, the morefragile that confidence seems to
become.
Psychologists like Edward Desiand Richard Ryan noticed this
decades ago.
Praise, they said, doesn'talways inspire.
In fact, it can control.
It shifts a child's attentionfrom doing to being seen doing.
(01:34):
And once approval becomes thegoal, authenticity begins to
fracture.
So today, I want to explore aquestion that's haunted me for
years.
When did we start mistakingvalidation for love?
And what happens to a person, toa culture, when praise replaces
presence?
(01:54):
Come along for the journey.
This is the whole parentpodcast.
A few months ago, I found myselfwatching my three-year-old son
try to build a tower of blocks.
This kid is usually the oneknocking down towers, not
building them.
Yet on that day, he was stackingthem carefully.
(02:15):
Wobbling, grinning, falling, andthen trying again.
I opened my mouth to say, Goodjob, buddy.
But then I stopped.
He wasn't asking for praise.
He wasn't asking for anything.
He was totally absorbed, lost inthe rhythm of his play.
In that moment, I thought ofAlfie Cohn.
(02:35):
He's been on the podcast.
And he wrote that praise isoften judgment wrapped in sugar.
We think of it as encouragement,but it's actually evaluation in
disguise.
It teaches a child not just whatwe value, but whose valuation
matters the most.
In other words, good job soundsharmless, but said too much, or
(02:58):
when unnecessary, it subtlyconditions dependence.
I began to see it everywhere inclassrooms, offices, Instagram
feeds.
The world is built on theselittle gold stars now.
Take, for example, this strangeexperiment from the 1970s.
Maybe you've heard me talk aboutit before.
It's one of my favorites.
(03:20):
Researchers go into a preschoolclassroom armed with felt tip
markers, and at first they justlay them out to see which kids
are going to use them fordrawing, for coloring, whatever.
Once they find all the kids thatreally seem to enjoy it, they
separated them into threegroups.
They took the markers away, andwhen they brought them back,
they told one group, You aregoing to be given a reward if
(03:43):
you use these markers, if youdraw with them.
It's going to be a fancycertificate with a gold seal,
and your name is going to be putup on the board.
The Good Students Club.
The other two groups weren'ttold about any reward.
Some of them got a reward, someof them didn't.
When that phase of theexperiment was over and the
rewards were handed out,actually everybody was happy.
(04:06):
But here's what happened next.
The children who expected to geta reward, the kids from that
first group, they stoppeddrawing when the markers came
back after the experiment wasquote unquote over.
This activity that had once justbeen play for them had now
become work.
The joy that they had fromsimply using the markers had
(04:28):
become a transaction.
The kids who didn't get areward, they kept using the
markers.
In fact, when researchers lookedat the pictures drawn by the
first group, the group that knewthat they were going to get a
reward, and all of the otherkids, they found something
astounding.
Even the quality was different.
The kids who drew just for thelove of drawing had produced
(04:50):
objectively better pictures.
That small moment in a preschoolart corner was a window into
something enormous.
Because as it turns out,motivation at all ages is
extremely fragile.
It's like a campfire.
Add a couple of logs to it, andit'll burn brighter.
(05:12):
Provide more warmth.
But add too much fuel and it'llburn itself out entirely.
(06:55):
Around this time, in a differentcorner of the world, a young
psychologist named MihaliChiksemihali was studying what
he called flow, the deep stateof immersion that comes when
time disappears and you forgetyourself completely.
Artists know it, athletes feelit, even monks in silent prayer
(07:17):
describe it.
But what fascinated ChicksaMihali was what killed flow.
It was external evaluation.
The moment that you notice thatsomeone is watching, or worse,
judging, the spell breaks.
In other words, praiseinterrupts that present moment.
And presence, that's thebirthplace of meaning.
(07:40):
Which makes me wonder.
If praise disrupts presence,then maybe the opposite of love
isn't actually criticism.
Maybe it's evaluation.
That's the twist that most of usmiss.
We think that praise is an actof love, the opposite of
judgment, when often it's justjudgment with better lighting.
When we say good boy, what wereally mean is you're lovable
(08:04):
when you make me happy.
That subtle distinction betweenI love you and I approve of you
becomes the architecture of alifetime.
It's why grown adults, peoplelike me, still measure their
worth in promotions and likesand applause.
It's why so many high achieversstill feel empty.
Because somewhere along the way,their sense of value got
(08:26):
outsourced.
Rewards, in a sense, are a formof modern control.
They feel like progress, thegrade, the raise, the pat on the
back.
But they're really just upgradedobedience.
The carrot replaces the stick,but the leash, it stays on.
You can see it in schools.
A generation raised on stickersand honor rolls grows into one
(08:49):
that's hooked on metrics andperformance reviews.
The gold stars becomes a resume.
The chart becomes an algorithm.
And we all learn in subtle waysto trade our curiosity for
compliance.
Even our moral education isbuilt this way.
We teach our children to do theright thing and then hand out
prizes when they do.
(09:10):
But morality withoutinternalization is just
manipulation.
We've replaced conscience withconditioning and then wondered
why empathy feels endangered.
It's not that praise is bad.
It's that it's too easy.
It's cheap.
It's not real connection.
It gives us the illusion ofconnection without the substance
(09:31):
of understanding.
When I think about my ownchildhood, I can trace this
thread like a faint scar.
After I began to manage my ADHD,I became one of those good kids,
a rule follower, the one whonever got in trouble.
My teachers loved me, adults inmy life trusted me, but I
realized now I wasn't beingmyself.
(09:51):
I was just performing goodness.
And there's a loneliness tothat.
The loneliness of theextrinsically motivated person.
Because when your worth dependson applause, or likes, or
followers, silence feels likerejection.
Even my success became hollow.
You hit the mark, but thesatisfaction evaporates almost
(10:14):
instantly.
You start chasing the nextthing, the next star, the next
like, the next nod from someonewhose approval you've confused
for love.
And all the while, your truedesires grow a little bit
quieter.
Until one day you realize you'renot even sure what you want
anymore.
(10:34):
This isn't new.
In ancient Rome, soldiers weregiven coins stamped with the
emperor's face as a reward forbravery.
Those coins weren't justcurrency, they were loyalty
tokens.
Proof of worth bestowed fromabove.
We haven't changed much, havewe?
The Emperor just got rebranded.
(10:55):
He's an algorithm now.
If you zoom out far enough,extrinsic motivation isn't just
a psychological issue, it's aspiritual one.
It reflects the deeper humanfear that without proof of
value, we might not really haveany.
But here's the quiet act ofrebellion.
To live from intrinsicmotivation, to act from
(11:17):
curiosity or wonder or love, isto trust that simply being is
enough.
It's to plant a seed withoutneeding a witness.
The good news is every childbegins this way.
We don't need to do anything asparents.
They don't paint for praise orsing for approval.
(11:38):
They build and they imaginebecause the world is fascinating
and life itself is innovation.
Our job as parents, or teachers,or humans in general, isn't to
instill motivation.
It's to protect it.
A few nights ago, I watched myson again.
(11:59):
Same blocks, same small handsstacking.
When he finally built the towertaller than himself, unlike me
at his age, he didn't look at mefor approval.
He just screamed in triumph,that pure, round, kind of joyous
hurrah that only comes from theinside out.
I sat there in the quiet,realizing he didn't need me to
(12:23):
say good job.
He just needed me to see him forwho he is.
That's what praise tries andfails to imitate.
The deep, wordless knowing ofbeing witnessed, not evaluated.
Maybe the point isn't to stoppraising altogether.
(12:44):
Maybe it's that we need to learnhow to praise differently.
We need to learn how toencourage rather than evaluate.
Not you're so smart, but youworked so hard.
Not you're so good, but I lovewatching you try.
Not a good job, but I see you.
(13:07):
We can't gold star our way backto wonder.
But maybe we can notice when itappears, unprompted, unmeasured,
for free.
Because love, the real kind,doesn't sound like a job.
Sometimes it sounds likesilence, held open long enough
for a child or an adult to heartheir own heartbeat and believe
(13:31):
that it's enough.
(14:03):
Just scroll down on your podcastapp, tap those stars, and if
you've got an extra 30 seconds,leave a couple words for me to
let me know how this podcast hasbeen helping you.
I read every single review.
It really means the world to me.
Number two, after you rate itand review it for the masses, I
really want to encourage you tothink about what we talked about
in this episode and send it toone parent in your phone who you
(14:23):
feel like might benefit fromthis specific episode.
It's great to have ratings andreviews, and yes, they help so
much, but there's nothing like apersonal recommendation from a
friend, hey, you gotta listen tothis.
It's really been helping me.
Last, if you want to go deeperwith me, get exclusive parenting
insights, free resources, andupdates on everything that I'm
doing, go ahead and join myemail list.
(14:45):
It's where I share things that Idon't get to get into on the
podcast.
I also will let you know aboutupcoming episodes and events,
and best of all, it's completelyfree.
You can sign up atwholeparentacademy.com or just
go to the show notes below andthere'll be a link there.
All right, that's it for now.
Thanks again for listening, andthank you in advance for doing
those three quick favors for me.
This has been the Whole ParentPodcast.
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