Evaluation: making children worry about how others will judge what they are doing. Children should be concerned primarily with how satisfied they are with their own efforts and accomplishments, rather than focusing on how they are being evaluated or graded, or what their peers will think of them.

Rewards: excessive use of prizes, candy, money, or toys. If overused, rewards deprive a child of the intrinsic pleasure of creative activity.

Competition: putting children in a desperate win-lose situation, where only one person can come out on top. A child should be encouraged to progress at his own rate.

Over-control: telling children exactly how to do things — their schoolwork, their chores, even their play. Parents and teachers often confuse this kind of micro management with their duty to instruct. This leaves children feeling that any originality is a mistake and any exploration a waste of time.

Pressure: establishing unreasonable, grandiose expectations for a child’s performance. For example, "hothouse" training regimes that force small children to learn the alphabet or math before they have any real interest can easily backfire and end up instilling an aversion/dislike/fear for the subject being taught.

This applies to all kinds of industries and jobs. Employees follow the same practice and expect that employers give better result, while employers revert it and the result is a lose-lose situation.

Examine your own practices as either an employee, employer, reflective teacher/trainer/mentor, learning activist or a concerned parent and think about: