Unintended Effects of Popular Advice

In a New York Times column on December 29th, 2025, “No, You Don’t Get an A for Effort”, Adam Grant correctly points out how grit has become an overvalued trait, leading to a generation of kids with unrealistic expectations who believe they are entitled to get an A just because they worked hard, independent of the quality of their work.

This trend reminds me of the effect of the movement that preceded it, when parents were given misleading advice and told to praise their children unconditionally in order to boost and inflate their self-esteem. Note: Unconditional love, essential for healthy psychological development, is different from unconditional praise.

Applying advice in a one size fits all manner is a common but unidentified culprit of parents’ being unsuccessful in their attempts to help their children, even when they use accepted and reasonable approaches, Even otherwise effective practices, and good advice, backfire when they are prescriptive. When we fail to recognize that, before we can know what to do to help someone, we must first accurately diagnose the problem that is getting in the way of their performance or progress.

How can a child improve, for example, if they are praised for doing what already comes easily to them or, alternatively, if they are told to simply try harder when what’s impeding them is limited capacity, a skill deficit, or a mental health concern?

Using a one-size-fits-all formula is misguided and can cause parents to focus on the wrong things, while missing the issue that needs their attention.

What parents and teachers reward, or emphasize, should depend on the particular needs of that child, factoring in and not rewarding their natural proclivities and strengths, and noticing where they need help.

Psychological information that becomes popular in the public domain can easily be misapplied or overgeneralized, causing even accepted practices to backfire and leading the helper to wrongly attribute failures to the person they are helping.