Raising a successful child

When you praise a child by telling him how smart he is, he tends to avoid challenging tasks, to give up easily when something is difficult, and to be competitive with his peers. When you praise him for how hard he works, he tends to seek more difficult puzzles and pays less attention to whether he's doing better than others. Intelligence is passive, in that you don't control how much you have; whereas effort is active.

And persistent effort is valuable, because "many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years."

Incidentally, I picked up these from Schlock Mercenary, specifically the artist's blog. Where would you expect to find this sort of information, if not in a web comic about space mercenaries?