Arriving at the Oscars. Photo by Alan Light, used under Creative Commons licence.

Everyone loves Oscars’ night – right?

We watch the stars collect their prizes, and we all get really excited. There they are, these grown-up people who go along to the prize-giving. They’re adults, and they sit there waiting to see if they’ve been chosen as winners.

They want to see that they’re recognised for their hard work, because making a film is not easy, however glamorous it looks in that moment. Behind the scenes it’s hard work and they want to be rewarded.

And here’s the interesting part. No-one tells those actors, those grown-ups, that they shouldn’t feel that way, or that making the film in itself should be enough.

Give kids the glory when they succeed. They need that. We all need that! 

So if you just continue training them, working with them in anything, in any direction of life, and you don’t give them a star, you don’t give them something to aim for, you don’t give them a new belt – a way of seeing and knowing that they have progressed and achieved and done well – if all they hear from us is what they did wrong and how they fell short and all the ways they didn’t measure up… they’ll slowly get bored and fed up, or just plain discouraged, and they’ll want to do something else.

To stop that happening, when they achieve something, you have to really give them the glory for that. You have to build them up. You have to give them high fives. You have to give them some sort of certification.

That is so important for a child and for any human being. We are all like this. Hollywood A listers, and the people in your office, and your friends and family members. And you too. All of us.