Rewards and consequences are tools for parents when we try to teach important things to our children. Because of this perspective, setting rewards and consequences sometimes can easily become bribing and threatening.
Clearly, threatening is not something we prefer to use to teach a lesson, rather it becomes like one as we get heated in the discussions or dealing with certain misbehaviours. Bribing, on the other hand, seem to be little bit more confusing about its risks. Bribing can be as detrimental as threatening when used too frequently. Both these strategies make the children let external reasons to control their behaviours. ‘Because I will get grounded, I need to do my homework; because I need to get money, I need to do my homework.’ These motives focus too heavily on external factors.
Instead, we want to strive to help our children to live with internal motives. ‘Because I feel proud when I do well on exams, I need to understand this concept so I need to do my homework; because not doing homework will make it harder later when I prepare for the exam, I need to do my homework. Since these motives are about themselves that come internally, children will not need nagging, reminders, or constant rules.
Perhaps these benefits and losses seem quite obvious. Then, why do we still gravitate towards using rewards and consequences in a way that is bribing or threatening? This is maybe because we want to see the results quickly. WE need to see our children doing homework NOW in front of our eyes. The quickest way to achieve this goal would be to either bribe or threaten. Sometimes in our busy lives, it wouldn’t hurt too much to use these short-cuts. However, if we always use short-cuts, we wouldn’t be able to ever reach the cause of the issues which in turn causes to repeat the same cycle. In other words, children will find a way to escape our rules and figure out to only do homework when we are there. This is not independent so this can’t be complete teaching.
Fortunately, it does not take so much to change from external focus to internal focus as long as we can change our perspective. Instead of giving children one directional rules in bribery or threatening way, we should guide them to see natural results of their own actions. ‘Not because my mom will make this happen, but because this is what is going to happen when I do this behaviour.’
In practical terms, this includes changing the way it is communicated. Instead of “if you don’t do your homework, I will not set up playdate/ let you play videogame later,” we can say, “ doing homework is your responsibility and you can’t have your privileges (videogames/playdates) without being responsible first.” The bottom line is the same for both sentences: no homework, no play. However, it guides our children’s thinking in a very different way. The first way implies that ‘mom wants me to do homework and she won’t let me play unless I do it.’ The second one conveys the message of ‘if I want to enjoy my privileges, I need to do my job first.’ This has less to do with mom but more about my choice and its consequences. These contrasting ways of thinking will inevitably shape their choices and courses of life differently in the long run.
We are still the one who can make natural or unnatural rewards and consequences happen most of the time especially with younger children. This makes keeping our words on internal focus with natural results of actions much harder. Yet, every time we are about to set new rules in forms of bribery or threatening, we should think twice about the message of OUR actions and words. Do we want to teach kids to always look for external rewards and consequences or do we want to teach our kids to think independently about their choices and be responsible for their actions?
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