Should I Bribe My Kids?: Rewarding Kids Explained
Feb 2, 2022 I hear about families that both struggle and thrive with teaching kids at-home. Our new normal has changed a lot of typical rules: screen-time restrictions have been largely lifted and parents are using an age-old technique more than ever.
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As someone who thinks about this a lot, parents – especially parents of younger kids with needs – often ask me, “should parents bribe their children?” The answer is, it can be, yes. Rewarding kids is actually an extremely important tool to build new skills – when applied correctly. And kids love them! So how did rewards get such a bad rep?
“Mommy has an important call for 1 hour, ok, so you can play on your iPad if you can stay out of the room, deal?”
The Experiment
It happened in 1917 with an experiment of Stanford University students by Professor Edward Deci. He asked 24 students to solve a puzzle in 13 minutes.
On day one, if they didn’t finish, he’d solve it for them – giving them an intrinsic motivator of not wanting it to be done for them. On day 2, he paid half of them $1 for solving each puzzle. This day showed that the paid students worked harder and solved more puzzles. On the 3rd day, he didn’t pay any of them again. This time he found that the ones he paid on the 2nd day didn’t try as hard on the 3rd day.
So, he surmised that extrinsic motivation (the money) served to deter intrinsic motivation.
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Later, researchers didn’t actually find a statistically significant difference in effort on day 2 vs. day 3. Additionally, researchers uncovered that the students already enjoyed playing the game – they already had the intrinsic motivation – so rewards were unnecessary. Why would you reward kids if they already enjoyed doing the task?
Reward Kids for Doing Things They Don’t Want to Do Naturally
So there is Rule #1 of doing rewards right: you reward kids for doing things they don’t want to do naturally – like breaking bad habits or building new ones.
There have been numerous studies on the effectiveness of rewards in breaking bad habits – from smoking cessation in pregnant women and in building new habits like exercising. When a child doesn’t already have intrinsic motivation for a behavior, rewards are important .
Rewards Should Be Based on Effort Not Outcome
Rule #2 is that offering rewards should be based on effort and not the outcome. For example, a student who regularly gets Ds in school probably won’t be motivated by a reward for getting an A – that may not be realistic. But, if the reward connects to working on schoolwork for an extra 30 minutes, that student can build study skills to improve their grades. Once the child develops that skill, you should stop rewarding it and move on to another skill that needs an extra push.
Rewards Matter
Rule #3 is that the reward matters. Imagine if your boss told you that you had to work an extra 30 hours this week, but he’s going to get everyone an engraved pen on Friday. Rewards have to hold value in order to drive value. If it’s added pay or some equal amount of time off later, that represents a useful reward, then a pen likely won’t motivate.
The Child Must Have a Choice
Finally, rule #4 – and probably the most important rule. Autonomy must be a part of the process. The child must have a choice. They must get a choice about what they work on and how, or even their reward.
So, if your student gets D’s and you want to motivate him to work harder in school, let him decide how long and how many days he has to work harder, and what he gets if he fulfills his goals. Without autonomy, we make rewards-based skill-building a transactional exercise – more like bribes – and that is probably not serving our kids well.
Remember, reward ideas for kids are everywhere. We buy ourselves gifts, we treat ourselves to evenings off or other perks for putting forth effort into things we’d rather not do. We use extrinsic motivation to develop a skill or habit – as that skill is practiced we develop intrinsic motivation to get better or practice harder without the external motivation.
So, families, go ahead and use a reward system. Just refocus on good behavior, building skills with autonomy, and change how we phrase our incentives.
“For next hour while Mommy is on a call, you can either play a math game or read a book. If you do this, I will let you pick what we make for dinner.”
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