Parenting & Family Quote by Haim Ginott

Ginott’s line isn’t sentimental parenting advice so much as a sly behavioral hack: praise works best when it’s not performed for the child. The intent is to shift “good job” from a transactional reward into something that feels like a stable fact about who the kid is. When children “overhear” admiration, they’re spared the pressure to react correctly, to beam on cue, to repay the compliment with compliance. The compliment lands as information, not a bargaining chip.

The subtext is an adult confession: kids are always listening, and much of what they become is shaped in the margins of our speech. Ginott flips the usual parental script. Instead of correcting the child directly (which can trigger shame or defensiveness), he suggests recruiting the social world around the child as a mirror. You’re not just telling your kid they’re kind; you’re telling another adult that your kid is kind, which makes the identity feel public, credible, and harder to dismiss as “Mom just says that.”

Context matters: Ginott wrote in the mid-century wave of humanistic education and psychology, reacting against punitive, obedience-first childrearing. His approach treats children as people with inner lives, motivated by belonging and self-concept rather than fear. The quiet brilliance is that it’s both gentle and strategic. It also carries a warning: if offhand praise overheard can build a child up, the casual criticisms adults trade in kitchens and car rides can do the opposite, just as efficiently.