Albert Bandura has an article about self-efficacy that I have read over and over again. I’ll summarize my own take-aways from it with the hopes that you’ll be interested enough to go see what he REALLY said.
Self-efficacy is a sense of personal effectiveness, a belief that I have the power through my performance to [...]
A friend of mine sees that the success of her work depends on actions taken by others — specifically others over whom she has no organizational control. She works with two different groups, one of which appears to be more motivated to participate than the other. This gives her an unusual opportunity to [...]
My children loved The Great Brain books by John D. Fitzgerald starting in the 2nd or 3rd grade. I enjoyed reading them out loud immensely.
There’s a good Wikipedia article about this series, so I’ll only give a brief summary here. Each book is a series of episodes about a Catholic family living in southern [...]
A friend of mine at work gave me this approach to feedback called Blossoming from a book by Bruce Wilkinson. She told me great things about using it with her children. When I can remember, I try to use it with mine — and I think it can be used with others — [...]
Here’s something that I wish I had learned before I had children:
Process praise focuses on the effort and strategy behind a specific behavior. “You worked hard!” “You thought of a terrific way to help that person.” In contrast, person praise involves making global assessments based on specific behavior. “You are so smart!” “You are [...]
Staying out here with my mother has made me sharply aware of two great gifts she has given to her children in the last 10 years:
She gave up her driver’s license voluntarily. It was relatively easy for her because she lives in a city with great public transportation and the cost of housing [...]
Yesterday I attended the memorial service for Thomas, a young man who had coped with Friedrich’s ataxia, a progress neurological disorder that gave him a heart attack and stroke at the age of 22. Many people spoke about what made him extraordinary — his sardonic sense of humor, his artistic talents and staunch [...]
