I highly recommend reading this article - How Not to Talk to Your Kids from the New York Magazine.  You don’t need to register or anything in order to read it.  What I thought was particularly interesting were the experiments the researchers conducted on the children, and how quickly they were able to see the results of their words in the children’s actions.

I’ve always detested how people will praise a child as being so smart just for getting something right, and now I feel like I have some good information to back up that gut reaction!