Most parents want their kids to grow up kind, and most default to the same tool to get there, reminding them to be nice, to share, to help. Two studies looking closely at the exact language adults use suggest the wording itself matters far more than it seems like it should, and that a couple of specific, small shifts do measurably more than a general reminder to be good.
The clearest evidence comes from a 2014 study by Christopher Bryan, Allison Master, and Gregory Walton, published in Child Development. Across two experiments involving 149 children ages three to six, the researchers tested whether framing helping as an identity rather than an action changed how much kids actually helped. In the first experiment, children told they “could be a helper” completed an average of 3.18 out of 4 helping tasks, compared to 2.47 for children simply asked if they “could help,” a difference of roughly 29 percent. Strikingly, the group asked to “help” performed no better than children who weren’t prompted about helping at all. A second experiment, run with a different adult who hadn’t used either phrase before, replicated the pattern, with “helper” framing producing 22 percent more helping than “help” framing. Calling a child a helper, rather than asking them to help, made the difference.
A second study helps show that this same principle, framing kindness as who a child is rather than what they did, also shapes whether a kind act sticks. In a 1980 study by Joan Grusec and Erica Redler, published in Developmental Psychology, 256 children ages five, eight, and ten donated marbles they’d won to children in need, then received one of two kinds of praise, character praise (“you’re the kind of person who likes to help others, you’re a very nice and helpful person”) or action praise (“it was good that you gave, that was a nice and helpful thing to do”). Two weeks later, when given a new, unrelated chance to share, children who’d received character praise were significantly more generous than those praised only for the specific act. The effect depended on age, character praise had no lasting impact on the five-year-olds, a real boosting effect on the eight-year-olds, and worked for the ten-year-olds regardless of which type of praise they’d received, suggesting the “you’re a kind person” framing takes hold once children start forming a more stable sense of who they are.
Together, these two studies point to a consistent underlying principle: children respond to being told who they are more than they respond to being told what to do. Bryan, Master, and Walton’s research shows that calling a child a helper, rather than asking them to help, taps into something that a simple request doesn’t. Grusec and Redler’s research shows that once a kind act has happened, praising the child’s character rather than just the act itself makes that kindness more likely to show up again later, in an entirely different situation. Between the two, teaching kindness looks less like repeating instructions and more like consistently reflecting back a kind identity a child can grow into.
It’s worth being honest about what these two studies don’t establish. Bryan, Master, and Walton’s research measured helping behavior immediately after the identity language was used, in a specific experimental setting, so it’s less clear how durable the effect is over weeks or months without repetition. Grusec and Redler’s study is now several decades old and involved a specific donation scenario, and while its core finding has become a widely cited basis for parenting advice, the exact percentages reflect that particular study’s design rather than a universal constant.
Within those honest limits, the research offers two concrete, easy-to-use tools for anyone raising a child. Instead of asking a child to help, try calling them a helper. Instead of praising only the kind thing they just did, try naming the kind of person they’re being. Neither shift requires more effort than the usual reminder. Both appear to do more of the actual work.