Why not to reward your children

We all agree on how important is to support and encourage our children, to make them feel that we love them and help them in their way to become happy independent and self-confident adults. Contrary to what we believe, praise and rewards don’t help along the way, but it can become an important obstacle in their development.

Main reasons:

1- One of the main reasons we use praise it is just because it is convenient for us, not because it is beneficial to the child. They don’t need the praise, but by praising something that they did, we happily try to reinforce a behaviour that we would like to see repeated. It is just because of our convenience, in that way it becomes a way of manipulation.

2- Creates insecurity and increases children’s dependence on us; Children become expectant and reliant on our evaluations. Instead of learning for themselves and forming their own judgement, children do things searching for adult’s approval, increasing their dependence on someone else and the inability to make their own judgment.

3- Rewards create a bad habit. The more rewards the parents give the more rewards the children will need to keep motivated. Giving rewards creates a habit to look for more rewards. The children don’t feel motivated towards any achievement or activity but towards achieving the reward. In this way, the children loose the capacity to enjoy their own achievements and the consequent sense that will help them build their self-confidence to become a more independent adult.

4- Lack of interest. It has been proven that after performing a task that has been rewarded the majority of children will lose interest in repeating the task on their own means, that is, just because they enjoy it with no reward. It has also been proven that children will only perform to the length in which they have secured the reward, that is, the minimum required, once the reward is secured they wouldn’t put extra effort that will not be rewarded.

5- Decrease of creativity and natural curiosity, essential qualities to learn and develop. Children eager to receive more praise keep repeating what they have been praised for avoiding taking risks and exploring other possibilities that would offer the chance of not being that “good at”. Children that are allowed to explore without judgment, rewards or praise prove to be more adventurous often trying tasks that are above their level of ability, because they are not afraid of failing.

An excellent book that deals with the effects of judgment, praise and rewards in children is Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes by Alfie Kohn.