Are Rewards for Children Really So Bad?

Thank you for continuing to be a loyal subscriber to the Parenting Translator newsletter! I would like to sincerely apologize for my newsletters being less frequent in the past few months. I have been working on some exciting projects which I will announce soon. In the meantime, the newsletter will be back with more regularity and I’m hoping to really focus on the topics that are most interesting and most helpful to YOU as a parent so give me some feedback and let me know what you want! Today’s newsletters will be on one of my most requested topics— the research behind rewards for children!

Sticker charts, earning something special for “good behavior,” and paying children an allowance for completing chores have long been common practice among parents. Yet, in recent years, these type of reward systems have come under attack by many parenting influencers and experts. In the world of “gentle parenting,” rewards for behavior are a big no-no. Dr. Becky, Big Little Feelings, Janet Lansbury, and many other popular parenting influencers advise parents to avoid rewarding their children— even claiming that rewards can be disrespectful or damaging for children. As Dr. Becky says, “we are raising humans, not training animals.”

Yet, at the same time, most child psychologists advocate that parents use rewards and most evidence-based parenting programs include the use of a reward system. Interestingly enough, both sides claim that their position is backed by research. So why is the advice of parenting influencers so different from child psychologists and how can both sides claim to have research on their side? What does research really find about rewards?

The Anti-Reward Movement

The crusade against rewards was initially spearheaded by author and gentle parenting icon, Alfie Kohn. [An interesting side note is that Alfie Kohn also led the crusade against the phrase “good job”.] In 1993, Alfie Kohn wrote a book titled Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes. In this book, Kohn claims that rewards are “useless” and “counterproductive” because rewards ultimately make children lose interest in what you are rewarding them for and they become motivated only by the reward rather than the task itself. In other words, he argued that when you provide external motivation (such as rewards) children lose internal or intrinsic motivation. According to this line of thinking, rewarding children for cleaning their