Effective Use of Rewards: Avoiding the Pitfalls
In my last blog post, I referenced the myth that rewards interfere with motivation. There is a grain of truth to this…when we promise incentives for “just doing” an activity that someone already enjoys, motivation to engage in that activity might decrease. Another situation that can backfire is when rewards are promised in response to vaguely defined “good” behavior and withheld if the behavior doesn’t meet the ill-defined mark. This kind of system might spur rebellion and resentment in your child. Insincere, overused, or vague praise is another type of reward that is ineffective.
Rewards, however, can be a powerful strategy for behavior change. Here are a few important guidelines:
· Set clearly attainable and definable target behaviors (observable, countable, and important).
More effective targets to reward: brushing teeth, turning in homework on time, staying in bed after lights out.
Less effective targets: being respectful, working hard, good listening.
· Target behaviors should be things where the child will enjoy a sense of mastery, as opposed to for the benefit of someone else. For example, you’ll have more success motivating a child who dislikes math to learn math facts than you will have with motivating a restless child to sit still.
· Define the target behavior as something you want your child to do (as opposed to what not to do). Instead of, “no getting out of bed,” you would say, “staying in bed after the lights are out.” Rather than, “no arguments at bedtime,” you might say, “brushing teeth on the first ask.”
· Give the reward soon after the desired behavior happens:
For a child that submits a homework assignment, you might give extra screen minutes right away.
For a child that stays in bed all night, you might have a small prize sitting out in the morning.
For something like teeth brushing, the child earns a sticker/ point/ marble during or immediately after teeth brushing.
· Ideally, you would wait for the behavior to happen and then reward it (which is called “shaping”). Incentives, where you tell your child that they will earn rewards for doing x, are not as effective as shaping. However, incentives are more realistic and still worth doing.
Be sure to pick rewards that your child is motivated to achieve. Create a reward menu with your child’s input. I usually suggest using a mix of social, activity, and tangible rewards. You can use marbles, stickers, tokens, or points to track progress. Don’t ever take points away that a child has earned. This type of punishment doesn’t work and will completely undermine the reward system.
Most parents tell me that they’ve tried reward systems in the past. Either the rewards “worked” for a while and then stopped working, or the child was never motivated by the reward system to begin with. To summarize, most unsuccessful reward systems contain at least one of the following pitfalls:
· Vague behavior targets
· Behavior targets that benefit the parents but not the child
· Intertwining punishments with rewards
· Goals that are unattainable for the child
The next post will outline how to put reward systems into practice!
