Those souls wishing to question the power of praise, should try it out on any random group of children.

The following scene is set at the preschool my wife and I ran together until the final week of last December.

One dozen children are sitting around a long oval table, waiting for delivery of their wedges of fruit. The youngest child, at 18 months, is happily mashing his mitts upon the table. The oldest is sitting without a word, hands folded neatly into a nest in his lap. The remaining little ones are scattered in assorted shenanigans.

“My goodness,” I say. I inhale just a little and send my eyebrows climbing. “Look how well William is waiting.”

An instant hush falls like a blanket over the table, thicker than if I had suggested that Santa was now surveying the room.

“I’m being patient, Mr. Sean!”

The voice pipes from a toddler who, just a single second before was yodeling an off key chorus to Yankee Doodle Dandy. His new declaration saturates the air, chased immediately by an avalanche of identical echos. Even the tiniest tot loses interest in his high chair and begins to wildly clap.

We all thirst for validation, as much a part of our DNA as the shade of our eyes, only less obvious and cradling infinitely more importance.

With my own children, I never allow the sun to leave the sky without letting them know how proud I am of precisely the person they are. Their ears even seem to stand at attention as they stand straighter and smile wider, shoulders swelling to fill the outline I’ve drawn around them. My verbal applause gives my words gravity. My children may love to hear me tell them I think they’ve done a great job, but they are also loathe to find me upset, disappointed, or angry in any measure.

This is not any sort of new age hokum I’m leaking from the right side of my brain. There is substantial research documenting the infinite advantage of regular praise in regard to the development of a child.

There is something inside each of us, that steady beat that makes us human, always searching for a rhythm to follow, eager to find license to a tempo that’s true. No matter how tall we grow, we never shed this innate need for compliments any more than we do our need for sunlight or water.

Every day my wife tells me she’s proud of me. Then she tells me why. I do the same for her. It might seem hokey to some, but it isn’t. The praise we extend to one another is constantly feeding our mutual flame with the finest of fuel and from the purest provenance possible.

We must practice praise. It is important for our marriages, and essential to molding who our children will one day be. We must of course tell them how they can do better, but we must also never forget to tell them what they do well. There is nothing quite like watching them attempt to recapture the magic.

Sean Platt is always a dad, but spends a significant amount of time ghostwriting and tweeting as well.