effort proud

We have made a concious choice to focus on effort rather than result, or rather effort and being specific about the results, with the girls, saying "You are working so hard!" when they are making a lot of effort to do something, and saying "You got up all by yourself" if that is what for example Leona did.

(vs. the generic 'Good job!')

When Eliana is struggling on her stomach after getting there by herself (we haven't given her tummy-time, so now that she has started to roll onto her stomach she is exploring and eventually struggling with the new experience) and Leona heads over to her to help her, we encourage her to not interrupt Eliana by saying "Eliana is on her stomach, she is working so hard."

Yesterday, for the first time, Leona said the following when she was trying to swing on her own (something she has just started trying to do the last couple days):

"Noona working so hard."

My heart soared a little (ok, a lot) - How cool is that! Acknowledging her own effort. 

This is in stark contrast to what we often hear and see out and about, like the girl about her age who climbed up the slide at the park today, and when she got to the top she clapped her hands and said the equivalent of "Good job!" (好棒啊!).



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