When we were children, many households had a ready supply of biscuits, lemonade or squash, which were often used as rewards (for doing jobs, keeping ‘out from under foot’, small successes at school or in sports). At that time, there was not the variety of ‘children’s treats’ on the market which there is today. With a tremendous range of biscuits, sweets and cakes and drinks available now, a parent cannot assume that a biscuit will have the value for children that it did when we were young.
Obvious? Perhaps, but we have seen parents become astonished when a child rejected a ‘reward’ that was offered. The parent considered the item as a reward; the child’s reaction demonstrated clearly that it was not!
When Grandpa was a child, getting a penny from his parents or grandparents was a big treat and he remembers it vividly, so he assumes that his grandchildren will consider it a great reward.
It is simply an economic fact that today’s penny is not worth much. When Grandpa was a youngster, it might have purchased a respectable amount of sweets. To these children his suggestion of a ‘big surprise’ evidently meant something else.
Often bedtime is also a time of conflict since children don’t like to get ready for bed and leave adult company. It is a rare young child who admits to being tired and wanting to go to bed! In this case the big surprise turned out to be no real surprise at all, leaving the children upset and perhaps feeling cheated, and Grandpa hurt and perplexed. His gesture of love was not seen by the children as generous, despite his caring intent.
This type of outcome happens in different ways at different ages. Parents sometimes offer ‘dinner out’ as a reward, having in mind a nice restaurant. But where do the children want to go? A pizza house or fast food place! Besides avoiding the assumption that children will like what parents like (or did like when they were children), we need to keep in mind the tastes of individual children.
if parents are to be effective in the use of rewards, they need to do a lot of questioning, observing, and testing to find out who likes what. We just can’t make assumptions about what others like. There is no universal reward for all people of all ages. As parents, we can’t assume that children necessarily like what we like, that what one child likes will be liked by another that children’s preference will not change over time. or that the sex of the child will tell you what he or she might like. This point is summed up nicely in a recent popular slogan: ‘Different strokes for different folks’.
When we talk about rewards and their use with children, a common reaction from parents is, ‘Why, you’re talking about a system of bribes!’ This concern is expressed so often that we want to give it special attention.
Suggesting the use of rewards with children is nothing new – it is the systematic, planned use of rewards t hat is important. All of us spend our lives in a constantly changing system of rewards – from early parental hugs and affection to gold stars in school, and on to grade marks and certificates. As adults we have salary scales, promotions, status, as well as interpersonal rewards from relationships with family and friends. It seems when people express a concern about ‘bribes’ it is not the idea of reward that they are objecting to, but the specific use of money as a reward, or objects purchased with money. Note, however, that hardly anyone does not consider a salary from work to be a bribe, nor do parents think of weekly pocket- money for their children as a bribe. And it is ridiculous to think of a hug, or a smile, or other spontaneous expression of love as a bribe!
So ‘bribe’ is really a loaded word. To most people the word suggests some kind of shady deal, a payment for something that shouldn’t really be clone. ‘Reward’ and ‘bribe’ then, arc not the same thing. A reward is a tangible expression of approval. A bribe is a payment for something ‘illegal’ or of questionable ethics.
With parents, this problem seems to come up most in situations where they assume the child ’should’ do something because of ‘duty’ or self-motivation. In such situations parents often see any sort of reward as being unnecessary or excessive, especially if the child doesn’t want to do something a parent thinks he or she should want to do. They may even feel that what the child really needs is a good smack. Yet we must remember that all of its do things because of the rewards involved – some immediate, some distant, some from our– selves, some from others. Children are no different.
We have heard parents protest, ‘Well, once you start re– warding children they won’t want to do anything without a reward. Are you going to follow them around the rest of their lives giving out rewards?’ Of course not. We do not suddenly ’start’ rewarding children. Their world is already full of rewards (and punishments). Parents can become systematic, however, by using those rewards which are preferred by individual children to motivate them toward desired behavior.
A child who is not learning to read may dislike reading because of the experience of failure. The parent may think the child should ‘want’ to read. If nothing is done, the result is a non-reading child, who falls further behind. Instead, the parent or teacher can use some kind of simple reward, such as points, tokens, or gold stars, to get the child to start reading and to motivate practice. As the child succeeds, that reward will no longer be necessary because reading itself, and the wonderful horizons it offers, become rewarding. Nobody has to follow a reading child around for the rest of his or her life rewarding reading! However you may have to provide an extra incentive to the non-reader for those first attempts, in order to get that child started. All parents are rewarded in a variety of ways for the things they do. Some of the ways are obvious (such as money or fame), and some are much harder to see but no less effective (self-congratulations or the respect of valued friends). These are not bribes for us, nor are our children’s prized rewards bribes for them! Systematic rewards merely bring the natural learning process under a degree of control.