 Pride and praise is crucial for our kids because the stories that we tell about our children are the stories that they in turn will tell about themselves. So we need to give them good stories to tell by showing them that pride and that praise. But I'm often asked how do we do that for those children who find pride and praise really difficult to hear? And there's a whole range of reasons why that might be the case for a child. But let's just think about, okay, so what does this look like in practice? Maybe you're a parent, a carer, a member of support staff or a teacher for a child who just does not take praise well. What can you do in order to still give them those great stories to tell about themselves? So number one is that you can defer it. So this is about not making a big deal in that moment that the child does something brilliant where you want to jump around and shout for joy and be really excited about the progress that they've made or the thing that they've done or the fear that they've overcome. It maybe doesn't want to be made a big deal of in that moment, but instead we might defer that praise, defer that pride and just casually mention it later on out of context when the pressure's off. Notice with the child that they did that great thing earlier, maybe when there's no audience, maybe when it's not putting the pressure on them to continue that thing. Just notice, hey, it was fantastic that earlier you were able to X, so defer it. Number two, we might just smile. So it might be that for this child, rather than the big whoop whoop, they just need a little catching of the eye if they're comfortable with that and a smile or a little tiny thumbs up or just something little, something that says, hey, I see you. I see what you did. That's great. Well done. Quiet, unobtrusive, non-attention-making kind of way. Sometimes it just takes a little smile, a little, hey, I noticed that's really cool. Next, number three, you might note it. I am a big fan of the post-it notes. I have like drawers and drawers and drawers of them everywhere. They're brilliant. We can use post-it notes to our advantage here or you might write postcards or just little notes. But writing down the thing that you thought was great that a kid did, that gives them something they can like take and hold. So well done for X. I loved how you Y. Writing it down and just kind of slipping it in their book, popping it under their pillow at home, putting it somewhere where they're going to see it is great because this child might not hear the praise. They might not hear your pride. They might not take it on board at the time, but you give them this or you leave it for them to find at a time of quiet when they might be able to take it on board and they haven't got the pressure of hearing it from you. That's a challenge and you've got something then that they can keep, they can hold on to, they can revisit again and again and again and again and again and that's really powerful. This is particularly helpful for children whose self-esteem is very low. So they will often get caught in these kind of negative thought traps where they are filtering out the good and zoning in on the bad because basically that reconfirms their view of the world and we're all looking to do that constantly. But we don't want that to happen for these kids with low self-esteem who think they're worthless, who are zoning in all the bad about them and are going to filter out the good things that you say. By writing it down and making sure they physically have it and it might not be on a post-it note, it might be in a text or whatever, but them having a thing they can look at and see means that they can revisit it and hopefully that overcomes a little bit that kind of way that they might have just filtered out what you said. So writing it down is really powerful and you may find that a child keeps them, revisits them a million times, just such a powerful thing to do. And then finally rather than praising the outcome, let's think about how we can praise or show pride in the process. So rather than saying to a child, well done for X, which can be really hard for them to hear, we might just notice part of that, like break it down, just praise a little bit of it. So we might talk about the way that they tried really hard or we might notice a particular little aspect. I really liked the way that you approached this. I thought you used really great problem-solving skills when this was a fantastic choice of colour for whatever, just find a little bit. So rather than praising the whole big thing and making this big a deal about it, we're just finding little, little, little chinks that we can praise. And just generally, more generally when it comes to pride and praise, praising the process is always a really positive thing because actually we don't want our children to feel like they've got to be perfect, they've got to achieve and that we're only going to praise a positive outcome. Sometimes the outcome is rubbish but the process was really good and they tried really hard and they did their absolute best and we want that. That is the behaviour that we're looking to encourage. So as a general rule, be looking to praise the process rather than that outcome anyway. So quiet praise, quiet pride, four ideas for making it happen. We can defer it, come back to it later when the pressure is off. We can just have a little cheeky nod or a smile or a little thumbs up, a tiny something that shows a child, hey, I noticed that was great. We can write it down, note it, give them something that they can find or see and look at again and again at a time when they feel able to look at it. And finally, we might praise tiny parts of the process rather than the big thing. Hopefully some helpful ideas in there. As ever, if you like it, please share it. Until next time, bye.