The True Prize

On occasion when I did something pleasant or good when I was young, my dad would say, “This makes me want to give you a raise,” or “Now I want to give you things that you want, like take you to Wendy’s.” While we didn’t have allowances and he would have taken me to Wendy’s regardless of whether or not I behaved perfectly, hearing him say things like that always made me feel that my decision to be a good person had made him happy.

My mother didn’t have the same approach, but she definitely had ways of showing she cared. She called to me one day when I was young: “Sev, there’s someone on the couch that needs a friend!” I thought she was saying that our dog was lonely and trying to distract her from her work, so I came in to comfort him and found a stuffed unicorn where I had been expecting to see the dog. Other such little prizes appeared for no rhyme or reason.

Perhaps these stories seem a little disconnected, but behind both of them was a principle that contributed to the greatness of my parents: they didn’t use bribery to get good behavior out of their children, but they still used small, spontaneous rewards to show us that we were appreciated.

I couldn’t have explained this principle when I was a child, mostly because I just felt that they were rewarding us for our behavior. But as I’ve been exploring the academic findings on parenting over the last year or so, I’ve realized that their system of rewards and the standard parenting practice of bribery are opposite in nature and effect. At first when I was introduced to the idea of rewards as negative for children, I was skeptical: I love rewards. The charm of them hasn’t died for me, and I haven’t felt the worse for receiving them; I love giving them to show appreciation as my parents did for me.

The problem isn’t so much with rewards as the common nature of them. Most parents use rewards to talk their children into starting or stopping a behavior. Dr. Hain Ginott in his book Between Parent and Child discussed the problem with rewards used incorrectly: “[Bribery] may occasionally spur the child toward an immediate goal. But it seldom, if ever, inspires [him or] her toward continual efforts” (Ginott, Goddard, & Ginott, 2003).

Ginott goes on to explain three more major issues with the idea of bribery. First, the bribery concept of “if-then”—“If you accomplish this task, then you will receive a reward”—implies that a parent expresses a lack of confidence. There’s a big “if” to start out that idea. Second, children will misbehave intentionally to goad their parents into prescribing rewards against bad deeds if that becomes the pattern. Third, children begin to associate their parents and doing good things with gifts and prizes. “[Parents] are greeted by the children not with, ‘Hello,’ but with a ‘What-did-you-bring-me?’” (Ginott, Goddard, & Ginott, 2003)

Essentially parents that use rewards as a fall-back cause their children to believe that everything good they do should be rewarded. This doesn’t create a pattern of responsibility; this creates a different idea. “If I look good to other people, I’ll get rewarded. If I do what I want in secret, I can get rewards from my parents when I do something they like.”

Ginott does not necessarily recommend cutting out the idea of rewards altogether, though. He has some guidelines. “Rewards are most helpful and more enjoyable when they are announced in advance, when they come as a surprise, when they represent recognition and appreciation” (Ginott, Goddard, & Ginott, 2003). I had been reading negativity against rewards until I came across this quote, and now I realize the value in my parents’ method of reward: they didn’t reward me for specific instances of obedience. It was an overall effort—resulting in changes and positivity in my character—that caused them to reward me in the way they did.

Basically what it boils down to is this: using rewards to generate behavior in your children—especially when you have repeatedly promised payment for good behavior—accomplishes the opposite of its purpose. Rewards don’t train children to listen, much less to be responsible and make the right decisions for themselves. We can talk about how to help children learn responsibility later, but for now bribery is not the most effective way to get there. Rewards can be a sweet, simple gesture from parents to show children that they are loved and thought about. In a spontaneous moment, that may be exactly what a child needs to know.

References

Ginott, H. G., Goddard, H. W., & Ginott, A. (2003). Between Parent and Child: Revised and        Updated: The Bestselling Classic That Revolutionized Parent-Child Communication, 60.     New York: Harmony. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com.byui.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=724916&site=eds-live