Is there really a problem with giving kids' rewards?

I’ve been giving these to students for forever, but I might’ve been sending the wrong message all along.

As a former teacher, I’m a huge advocate for rewards. Stickers? Check. Prize box? Check. Table points? Double check.

When I was in primary school, I would’ve done almost anything for a great big gold star to be pressed on my chest. I would wear it with pride and beg my mum not to wash my uniform so I could hold onto the glory of being rewarded for a few more days.

And for me, it’s worked in the same way with my students.

When a student would give me a great answer, help out another student without being asked, bring in a note when told, or show any other good, positive or responsible behaviours, I would give them a reward to show them that they were doing the right thing.

This was always in conjunction with verbal praise like “well done”, “good job” or “great effort”.

But apparently, I had been doing it all wrong.

Gentle Parenting reports:

“Rewards such as stickers work by increasing the extrinsic (that is the external) motivation of children. Simply you reward the behaviour you want and ignore that that you don’t. Classical conditioning tells us that this should result in more of the positive behaviour. The major flaw here is that no real change has taken place in the child’s beliefs and personal drives. They are only motivated to behave in a certain way because of the reward on offer, remove the reward and the desired behaviour disappears.”

Well surely a change has taken place. All children need motivation, whether it comes from a place within themselves or from someone around them, like a parent, teacher or friend.

I never saw anything wrong with stickers or rewards. And I wasn't the only one. My co-workers used sticker charts, raffle boxes and the most popular of them all Class Dojo (an online points system where students have their own avatar and can award and deduct points at the teacher's discretion).

I gave more tangible rewards to younger years, from Kindergarten to year 2. I found that the older grades of years 3-6 responded better to public acknowledgement, such as merit certificates during assemblies, or congratulations in front of the class.

I saw giving rewards as a way to encouraging students to show "good" behaviours and enforce that what they were doing was correct, right, worth receiving praise and being acknowledged.

There's nothing wrong with that, right?

How do you feel about rewards? Do you give them to your children?

Like this? Try these:

From your child’s teacher: “What I wish every parent understood.”

Until two weeks ago I was a teacher and I did this all the time.

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