When very young, my daughter had one of those wonderful twists of language coming from children on the very cusp of language sophistication. Hers was a superlative and she used it for things that were absolutely at the top of her scale: more-ther-than. “I love dogs more-ther-than any other animal in the whole world:” campaign rhetoric for the dog we didn’t yet have. “I love pancakes more-ther-than any other breakfast:” usually said in the last of her evening as she climbed into bed. And the granddaddy of them all, “I love you more-ther-than anything:” always a winner for mom and dad. But here’s the rub. Everything became more-ther-than…everything. She understood the impact of praise but not the discretion it needs to make it real. And she was but 5 years old.

Just a couple of weeks ago I heard Carol Dweck, psychology professor at Stanford University, interviewed on NPR. She told the story about how her daughter hated going to her soccer camp and how she began to find ways to stay at home. Eventually she was not there more than she was. At the end of the camp, she came home lugging a trophy for something like “most improved.” Apparently all campers got one. Her story highlighted the diminishing impact of my daughter’s “more-ther-than” and how our world is swimming in accolades. I’m not a fan of any awards, but I’m especially on guard about them when everyone gets one.

The danger of overpraise is the lasting effect it has on young people who develop both a constant demand for attention and a calculation for getting it. They become arbiters of awards rather than participants in experience. And beware of their developing sense of irony that eventually tells them, at least internally, that the value system isn’t really a true one. They grow weary, even cynical, and they stop believing in what is told to them and of them. Somewhere along the way we adults have taken a wrong turn on the self-esteem highway, thinking that self-esteem is a noun, an object one has or does not have, something that needs to be conferred by someone else, rather than something held strong by a present participle verb such as “getting” or “developing.”

And one needs, as a loving parent, to ask oneself over and over again “who is this for?” Is it about them, our children, or us, their parents? I heard Edwin Friedman, an educational psychologist and writer, once say at a conference “the kids who are doing best in the world are those whose parents made them least important to the parents’ salvation.” Hyperbole aside, these words make sense to me. Make sure it really is about them, and if they don’t want to play soccer, maybe they shouldn’t.

The other side of overpraising is, as Hamlet says, “metal more attractive.” Children gain a fuller sense of self and begin to believe in the truth of real achievement through hard work, resilience and, yes, tempered expectations. Not everyone will win, but exercising one’s commitment to hard work is the prize in itself. Not overpraising will also allow them to accept the responsibility for their own work and will take them far away from the land of “that teacher doesn’t like me” or “that coach likes Nicole, or Sandy or Violet better than me.” Those islands hold children hostage to the external and stops them from moving forward, even if the coach does like Nicole a bit better.

But most of all overpraising and making everything “more-ther-than” just isn’t truthful, and that matters. One of my greatest privileges is teaching King Lear to juniors and seniors who are reading it for the very first time. There’s a passage in there where Kent, lifelong servant to Lear, tells the misguided king the truth. “See better, Lear,” he says, trying to guide the man he so dearly loves away from the impending tragedy to which the king races. That’s it. Three of the best lines in all of literature: “See better, Lear.” We all need a Kent in our lives, and as parents it can be the better role we play. We can both love and guide, truthfully, and that can mean more in the long run…more-ther-than anything else.