There is subtle difference between praising and telling kid that he/she is smart. Smartness should be unconditional idea for a person. I believe that 3-9 years old is the best period when parent should tell repeatedly to his kid that he/she is smart, pretty, brave and so on. But unconditionally, for child didn't come to an idea that he/she is good only if he/she is smart, pretty and brave. If he/she does, then she would be unable to say something stupid, behave cowardly, or look not so pretty without believing that she is bad. This means also that parent must never tell to his child that he is stupid, coward, ugly and in any other sense have traits that are not socially desireable. Unconditionally.

All books written by psychologists to parents would tell you that. At least all I've read do.

> But many innovations have been sprung from a combination of intelligence and laziness.

If your child would grow to be completely not lazy person, then either you are genius of practical psychology and education, or your child have some inherent traits that make him not lazy and your efforts made little or no difference. The second is more probable. Moreover I do not believe that smart kid can grow non lazy. If he did he is not smart enough to see how he can cut corners.

I know about innovations, and I did some in the past. I wrote programs for automation but you now, I had never seen success because I was a way too lazy to make this programs usable for someone except of me. My programs die when I change job. I was a way too little motivated to do more than just to write the program. And yes, I never believed that I can work hard for more than a few months. I'm "too smart" for a hard work, if I work hard it means for some deep neural net in my head that I'm not smart enough. I got this idea in the school, where I did nothing and known math better than anyone else, because I had read all math textbooks two years ago just for fun. It was supported by my knowledge that my IQ reach 142 and it is very high. I got this idea and I cannot get rid of it even now, when life keeps proving me that the idea is deadly wrong. And yes, I fear to be stupid, this fear sometimes works even if I managed to stop my impulse to make a stupid thing before anyone noticed.

It is just anecdote, but I'm almost got my bachelor degree in psychology, I'm working with psychotherapist around my problems, and I believe that self-esteem should be based on manageable things, on something that is under control of a person. Smartness is not under control of a person, you can behave on impulse without thinking, you can be tricked by circumstances or other people, you can do a lot of stupid things, while trying to be smart. Moreover there are circumstances when to do something now is more important than to do something smart. So smartness is not a good base for a self-esteem.